Eavesdropping Issue Shows Why Democrats Are Minority Party (1/22/06)
by Dean Hartwell
I went to a local Democratic club meeting recently and the conversation quickly turned to the Bush Administration’s eavesdropping on United States citizens. The whole club, to a member, expressed its outrage at this invasion of privacy.
Some of the members called for the impeachment of President Bush. While a case can be made that the President deserves it based on his willful violations of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), now is not the time to pursue this option.
One reason is that impeachment is not going to happen. The Republicans, still loyal to President Bush, control both houses of Congress and have no inclination to start official proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee.
The other reason mirrors the first one. Democrats are in the minority because they can’t get past their emotional responses that only other Democrats can relate to. They end up “preaching to the choir” with bumper sticker slogans about issues such as the war in Iraq and domestic spying, the kind of preaching that does not increase the number in the congregation.
Can the Democrats ever regain their majority status in Congress?
That depends upon the mood of the public who could put them there. From 1955-1995, the public saw fit to vote Democratic for the House of Representatives through the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam War, the gasoline lines, President Reagan’s popularity, Desert Storm and Bill Clinton’s election.
No matter what the Democrats did, the public trusted them more than the Republicans to support the people. They lost this trust when they could not articulate a reason to be kept in power beyond the 1994 elections. Newt Gingrich and company sailed in that year with their “Contract with America,” a set of promises to bring a number of legislative proposals to the floor of the House of Representatives. Some of these ideas appealed to Democrats, including the promise to eliminate unfunded federal mandates to the states.
That’s what the Democrats are missing now. They need to bring Republicans into the solution instead of portraying them as the problem. A loyal Republican will not listen to the words “impeach Bush” without contempt for the one uttering it.
But a reasoned approach about how the President could have gotten warrants to pursue conversations involving U.S. citizens might soften a Republican’s point of view. The approach could include how the eavesdropping has expanded from telephone calls to electronic mail and Internet usage. Lastly, the approach could permit a Democrat to explain to a Republican that the President has no legal authority to pursue warrantless eavesdropping.
It might even get the Republican to feel a little contempt for the one who broke the law.