Immedately following the 2004 election, President Bush laid out an ambitious, though in hindsight unrealistic, domestic policy that included the partial privatization of Social Security and a major overhaul of the federal tax code. With the first proposal, the President inadvertently offered the Democrats and their allies the opportunity to coalesce to a degree unseen for many years in Washington, and within a few short months, the plan was dead in the water. In this week's issue of
Time magazine,
Mike Allen takes a look at the second, lesser publicized policy which has fared just as poorly as the first.
President Bush may have drawn cheers at campaign rallies last year by calling the federal income tax code "a complicated mess" and promising to make its "million pages" simpler and fairer. But H&R Block can breathe easy for another season. Bush aides tell TIME that the President is likely to postpone any big push for comprehensive tax reform--which looked like it would be a centerpiece of next year's agenda--until '07 or '08. In the meantime, he will probably start small by mentioning the issue in the State of the Union and other addresses next year. Tax reform tested poorly with a Republican-financed focus group, showing more groundwork needs to be laid. The official White House stance is that Bush has not decided whether to pursue the idea next year, but aides say they doubt they could attract Democratic support in a midterm-election year. And the g.o.p. is gun-shy after the Social Security debacle. "No one wants to put something out there that's not going to go anywhere," a White House official said. But House Republicans are still likely to pass a simplification measure by April 15 so they can bash the irs on the campaign trail. [emphasis added]
Over the course of his political career, George W. Bush has been highly effective at removing the focus away from himself and placing it on his opponent. At no time was this strategy more apparent than during the 2004 presidential contest, when the White House and its allies expended as much -- if not more -- effort tarring John Kerry's experience during the Vietnam War as they did selling the President's record over the past four years. This tactic was also evident during the 2002 midterm elections as the President used 9/11 imagery to hammer away at Democrats, many of whom were loath to accede to Republican calls for another war in Iraq.
But President Bush's complete dearth of domestic accomplishments, coupled with the continuing violence in Iraq, call into question whether this strategy of distraction rather than substance will be effective in the 2006 elections. This, of course, does not mean that the White House will not try this tactic; as we have seen during his recent speeches on Iraq, the President has tried to shift the focus away from himself and on to John Kerry. Nevertheless, even the specter of John Kerry should not be sufficient to dupe the American people again.
In order to inhibit the President's ability to succeed with these plans, the Democrats will have to expend some efforts reminding voters of the utter failure of Republican policies. This should not be hard. Just as Democratic President Harry Truman ran against the "do-nothing Republican Congress" during the 1948 election, so too should today's Democrats run against both the "do-nothing Republican Congress" and the "do-nothing Republican President." For instance, a Democratic congressional candidate might state the following: "President Bush and his do-nothing Republican allies in Congress failed to enact any significant domestic legislation over the past two years."
The Democrats must focus on George W. Bush and his Republican allies by pointing to utter policy failures such as Social Security privatization and the tax reform package mentioned in the Time magazine piece above rather than falling into the same traps as they did in 2002 and 2004. It's that simple. And if they do this, they won't get knocked down on election day as they were last year and three years ago.
