Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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100 Down, 1361 to Go

Monday, April 30, 2001

From Hanover, New Hampshire
The Grafton County Lincoln Day Dinner

Grudging appreciation. That, I think, is the general tone of the press coverage at the 100 day mark of the First Second Bush Administration.

The polling numbers are good (except, as the papers on the coasts take great pains to point out, for President Bush's handling of the environment), the stock markets have settled down, gas prices have settled up, the Chinese Incident has settled out, and American public seems to have settled in to seeing George W. Bush as their President.

So, what's not to be happy about?

Everything, if your name happens to be Dick Gephardt.

Remember that number from the Washington Post/ABC poll that the Congress is getting favorable reviews by 58% of respondents?

That number is high because the Congress isn't fussing and feuding with itself or the White House and the American public seems to want everyone to play nicely with each other.

This does not bode well for Mr. Gephardt who, as the Democratic Leader in the House, is charged with making the case that a change is needed in which party controls it.

The Democrats in the House are on the brink of making exactly the same mistake their brethren across the aisle made in 1995 when, still quaking with the excitement of taking control after 40 years in the legislative desert, the Republicans could not make the strategic shift from critical antagonism as the minority, to collegial affablility in the majority.

The party in the minority HAS to bring the fight. They HAVE to energize their base. They HAVE to make the majority look weak and ineffective, or (as Newt Gingrich did in 1994), corrupt.

Bush is doing quite nicely without conflict. The public doesn't seem to want conflict. But, Gephardt needs conflict. In creating it, Gephardt runs the risk of alienating the very voters he needs to effect the change he wants: White, suburban moderates.

Last week a senior political thinker in the media wrote to ask what evidence I have to support my "change in tone" theory.

Here it is: From the moment the Republicans took control of the House, the Clinton Administration (and, by extension the entire Democratic Party apparatus) never spoke about their goals, their policies, or their President without comparing them unfavorably to something or someone on the Republican side.

In a eerily Orwellian manner, they always needed, and always found, an enemy.

Welfare Reform? Gingrich wants poor babies sleeping in puddles at the side of the curb on city streets.

Sex scandal? Hire private detectives to find anything about anyone from however long ago, and say, "See? They all do it, too."

Fund raising scandal? Have the IRS audit dozens of Conservative organizations and say, "See? We're no worse then they are."

The difference in tone is this: A fairly sizable majority of Americans think that Bush is doing OK because � because they think he's doing OK and they seem to like the manner in which he's doing it.

They don't appear to need to believe he's doing OK at the expense of the Democrats or the Moderates, or the Conservatives or our foreign allies, or our foreign adversaries.

They don't appear to need to believe he's going OK because Dick Gephardt is doing not-OK.

The Democrats will do themselves great harm as they return to what they think worked for them over the past seven years. As an example, there will be a number of Democrats who do not attend the luncheon at the White House today as some sort of protest.

They think that somehow makes President Bush look bad. It only serves to make them look small and petty.

Republicans must continue to raise the "collegiality bar" higher and higher. And they need to point out in specific terms every time Dick Gephardt or one of his lieutenants knocks it off its pegs, or tries to duck under it.

Interestingly, this is exactly the strategy George W. Bush, Karen Hughes, and Karl Rove employed for his race against incumbent Governor Ann Richards. The more she tried to goad him, the more he ignored her, which caused her to become even more shrill, which convinced the voters of Texas they - guess what - liked George W.'s style.

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