Could this be the dirtiest US election ever?
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You shouldn’t be thinking about measuring up the White House for curtains just yet, President George W. Bush told the Democrats this week.
At this stage in 2004, “some of them were picking out their offices in the West Wing”, he reminded pundits. But despite his bravado, the Republican Party is looking pretty desperate in the run-up to next week’s Congressional elections, when the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are up for grabs. One poll puts the Democrats ahead by 54% to 41%, and they could even regain control of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. The approval rating for the Republican Congress is just 16%, while voters prefer the Democrats on Iraq and “virtually all the key issues”, except the war on terror, says Leonard Doyle in The Independent. So the Republican fightback is emphasising this issue, while a negative advertising blitz is also designed to galvanise core voters. This could be “the dirtiest election ever”, reckons The Independent.
And while the Democrats have traditionally been plagued by internecine battles, the tables have turned this time. Anger at Congress is palpable, but it comes largely from restless conservatives and Republicans, says
Andrew Sullivan in The Sunday Times. Titan of intellectual conservatism William F Buckley speaks for many when he calls the Iraq war a failure that stems from the lack of a coherent governing philosophy in the White House. More critically for Bush, the “rural heartland” also shows signs of revolt. And fiscal conservatives are “appalled” by massive spending and borrowing. If the Republicans can’t eke out a victory this time, blame conservatives.
How might a Democratic win affect economic policy? Bush’s generous tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 mean he hasn’t balanced the budget, although “lower marginal tax rates on modest incomes, capital gains and dividends made sense”, says the FT. A strong result for the Democrats would probably mean all of these cuts expiring in 2010. The Democrats’ planned modest increase in the minimum wage “should not have big negative effects on employment”, though the US may well become more protectionist with a Democratic Congress, which could cause “huge” damage. The Republican’s economic record, to put it charitably, is mixed; “the Democrats do not look likely to be a big improvement”.
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