The Bad news about 1998
BARONE, MICHAEL
The Bad News About 1998 By Michael Barone Many Republicans are taking it for granted that they will make big gains in the congressional election in 1998. The president's party, they like to say,...
...But Republicans should not be too quick to count their chickens...
...In the House it's pretty easy to identify 30 seats held by each party the other party could conceivably take away...
...They already hold all but four House seats in the Rocky Mountain states, and none of those four is likely to switch...
...In the South, the number of seats Republicans could pick up—seats where popular conservative Democrats might retire or where more liberal Democrats might be vulnerable— isn't very large...
...But Republicans have some pretty clearly vulnerable Senate seats up too—Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, maybe Georgia, Indiana, and Iowa...
...It's happened before in the sixth year...
...That means significant Republican gains, if they come, must be made in the industrial Great Lakes states and California, and something new will have to happen for that to occur...
...Thus Richard Nixon, reelected in 1972, decided to fire his entire cabinet, to zero-out government programs after campaigning as an almost bipartisan centrist, and to keep covering up the Watergate burglary—and lost big in 1974...
...Democrats have some pretty clearly vulnerable Senate seats up next time, in California, South Carolina, and Illinois, and, depending on possible retirements, maybe in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana...
...To make matters worse, Republicans have little or no chance of picking up seats in in the Northeast, where Newt Gingrich and the southern cast of the party hurt badly in November...
...Thus Franklin Roosevelt, reelected in 1936, proposed to Michael Barone is senior staff editor at the Reader's Digest...
...There may be a recession in 1998...
...The president's party, they like to say, usually loses big in elections in his sixth year...
...there may not...
...Nor did Republicans suffer significant losses in 1986, Ronald Reagan's sixth year...
...Go back and look at the reasons "out" parties have made big sixth-year gains...
...The dynamic that has prevented the party in the White House from gaining in off-years will almost surely continue to hold...
...1 But there could " be little change in | 1998...
...Nor do the realities of 1998 look all that great for Republicans...
...Why...
...Not much room for gain...
...True, they did lose control of the Senate, but that was less an expression of popular will than it was a matter of luck: In 1980, the Republicans had won 11 of the 13 closest Senate races, but in 1986 they lost five of the seven close ones...
...In other words, it may very well be that the Republicans won their sixth-year gains—52 seats in all—in the second year of the Clinton administration...
...Big gains are possible, but they are not automatic—and Republicans might not gain at all...
...There are maybe four more such targets each in Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas, a couple more in Arkansas, and one apiece in Tennessee and Kentucky...
...In all these cases, there was no recession, no hubris, no big losses for the party in power...
...The in-party was shrewd enough to get the economy to soar during the fourth year, when the president had to run for reelection...
...The public's response to Reagan was expressed more accurately in House results, in which Republicans lost only five seats...
...One reason: recession...
...Only one thing can be said with much confidence: It is not likely that Republicans will suffer significant losses...
...Republicans would be foolish to assume that some basic rule of politics will automatically produce the results they desire in 1998...
...The problem for Republicans is that the environment is beginning to be less target-rich...
...And there are Republicans from the region who may be picked off, which would offset any gains...
...Thus Lyndon Johnson, after his 1964 landslide, pushed through Great Society and anti-poverty programs, formulated by professors but with little support from either politicians or voters, fought the Vietnam war with no strategy for victory— and lost big in 1966...
...But then the economy tanked in years five and six, and voters switched...
...It can be said with some confidence that the Republicans will not lose control of either house of Con* gress...
...As Bill Clinton consciously modeled his 1996 campaign on the 1984 Reagan campaign, it is possible that 1998 will follow 1996 as 1986 did 1984...
...Speaker Newt Gingrich likes to quantify it: The party out of power, he says, has gained an average of 41 House seats in sixth-year elections...
...A lot of Republicans thought that a recession would help their presidential nominee in 1996...
...In the Deep South, I count only four, none an automatic pickup to judge by November's results...
...Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the country, it didn't happen...
...It is left-wing Democrats, not middle-of-the-road voters, who right now can legitimately claim to have been ignored by him...
...Nor is Bill Clinton waxing hubristic these days...
...But neither hubris nor recession may be present this time...
...After a successful reelection, the president felt he could advance all those causes he really wanted to push all along but hadn't dared to because they were politically unpopular...
...Only the old-fashioned way will they win big: They'll have to earn it...
...One can imagine Republicans losing Senate seats as well as gaining them...
...Bob Dole carried the row of Great Plains states from Oklahoma to North Dakota, but these states are now so reliably Republican that there is only one— one!—Democratic congressman in the entire area...
...This helps explain why the Democrats made huge gains in 1974 and 1958 and why the Republicans kicked the stuffing out of the Democrats in 1938...
...Another reason: hubris...
...The Republicans did not lose large numbers of seats in 1902, six years after William McKinley's victory, or in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt's sixth year, or in 1926, six years after the ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge swept to a huge victory...
...Who knows...
...His first postelection appointments—Erskine Bowles, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen—suggest a more centrist administration...
...It may very well be that Bill Clinton's moment of hubris came in 1993 and 1994, when he pushed through a tax increase, failed to pursue welfare reform, and allowed the first lady to propose a statist healthcare plan...
...And in Iowa and Washington, two volatile states, Democrats hold only two seats Republicans could conceivably win...
...The president's party is stuck with all his positions, some of which will be unpopular somewhere even if they are all popular nationwide, while the other party is completely free to adapt to local terrain...
...pack the Supreme Court and push the centralizing programs of his Third New Deal—and lost big in 1938...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 17
