Thursday, June 21st, 2007
By Brad Bannon
When sailors navigate, they look to the stars. When politicians legislate, they look to the polls. But sometimes, the sky is cloudy and often polls are contradictory. Then you have to go with your gut.
The new Democratic congressional majority has already done a lot to repair the image of a Congress that fell into disrepute under Republic control, but the Democrats still have a lot of work to do.
According to national Gallup surveys, Congress’ job rating has improved since the Democrats took control but public confidence in Congress still is not very good. Last December only a fifth (21%) of Americans gave Congress a negative job rating while three quarters (74%) of Americans assigned the legislative branch negative grades. The net negative for Congress’s job rating was 53% i April.
Gallup reported that Congress’ positive job rating was up slight to 33% while the negative was down to 60% which is a 27% net negative rating. If the Democratic congressional leadership wants to improve the Congress’ image before Election Day in 2008, they will have to take bold steps. The Democratic leadership will have to lead, follow or get out of the way.
The legislation that the new Democratic majority in the House passed in the first hundred hours was easy pickings because there was a clear public consensus on the issues that House Democrats dealt with early in the session. Big majorities of voters wanted a higher minimum wage, implementation of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and stronger ethics rules.
But Americans also want Congress to solve problems that require heavy lifting like the war in Iraq and high health care costs. These problems will be tougher to tackle since there is no consensus on the solutions. Now that House Democrats have picked the low hanging fruit, they are moving on to the really tough issues.
The legislative process resembles basketball. You start the game and make a few easy lay-ups to build your confidence. Then you take longer shots until you hit 3 pointers from beyond the arc.
National surveys indicate that ending American involvement in Iraq is the most pressing problem for voters. The only question is how.
In a survey that the Associated Press conducted in the middle of February, Americans said they didn’t like the war but they didn’t want to cut off the funding that keeps the war going. Only two out of five (39%) Americans think the war is a worthy cause while over half (56%) think it is a hopeless cause. However, only three out of ten (29%) Americans want to cut the funding while two thirds of the public opposes the idea.
But the support for war funding has been decreasing over the last few months. The same goes for escalation of the war. Almost two thirds (63 %) of the public opposes the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq but only four out of every ten (38%) of Americans want to stop funding the troop surge.
Americans are passionately ambivalent about the war in Iraq and all of the great issues of the day. Since Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about these issues, they are not under great pressure to make sure that all of their opinions on a particular issue are ideologically consistent. The goal of leadership is for politicians to take strong stands on the issues and help Americans resolve and reconcile their ambivalence.
Because there is no national consensus on how to end the war, congressional Democrats are moving cautiously. But the war in Vietnam did not effectively end until Congress cut off funding. Of course, Democrats can wait until the United States elects a new president who will probably bring the war to an end. But the delay will cost the lives of hundreds of brave American men and women and billions of dollars for a lost cause.
The same goes for the top domestic concern which is making sure that all Americans have health insurance. Late in February, CBS News conducted a national survey to measure attitudes to health care reform. Even though, there is a lot of concern about health care access, there is no consensus on how to solve the problem.
Just less than half of all Americans believe that the federal government should guarantee health care for everybody if it meant that the cost of their own insurance went up. Only half of the public would be willing to pay higher taxes to provide health care for all.
Democrats worry about being pilloried and hillaried on this issue, so they plan on taking incremental steps like expanding eligibility for Medicaid and children’s health insurance programs. But Democrats should use the popular desire for change to fight for a universal health care program, which would fundamentally change and improve the system.
Legislators don’t usually want to take on an issue until six or seven tenths of Americans are ready to support the initiative. Since this kind of consensus doesn’t exist on Iraq or health care, Congressional Democrats will have to create one. Congressional Democrats may not have enough votes to pass anything over the president’s veto but they do have enough strength to stand for something.
A strong agenda demonstrates leadership and gives Democrats the opportunity to show voters what the party can do if it controls Congress and the White House.
Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research, a firm that polls for Democrats, labor unions and issue groups.
