War of Wits

The polls have closed and the votes have been tallied. In a decision that can only be described as sweeping, the House and Senate have both ceded control to the Democrats. Our eyes and ears have stopped bleeding from months of assault by gutter politics, false accusations and deceptive advertising. The country has finally spoken.

Every election since my conversion to political independence -the event that I refer to as “the quickening” - I am always interested in analyzing the single message the country sends to our leadership as a whole. What did we convey by the totality of the votes that we all cast? Was it a referendum on President Bush, on the House or on Iraq? Was it a vote of confidence in Democratic values and national security priorities?

Prior to the election, Bush was confident that America would choose to continue down the road to ruin. He said this election was about which party could keep America safer when it comes to the war on terror. Until today, he insisted that Donald Rumsfeld would remain at his post for the duration of Bush’s term. Bush publicly lauded coach Rumsfeld for the fine job he was doing directing the exercise of Iraqi democracy by his continual running in place on the Bush League field of dreams.

Now today comes the announcement of Rumsfeld’s resignation and the nomination of Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense, which is evidence of two things;

First, that Bush was –as I said before– playing politics with soldiers lives; seeing which way the wind blew. And when that wind stiffened and finally turned on him, Bush decided the time had finally come to find a new Secretary of Defense. And second, that Bush didn’t learn a thing. He nominated a career Intelligence official. A member of his father’s administration and a friend of the Bush family. This is in no way intended to impugn the character or career credentials of Mr. Gates, but the truth is, the fighting men of this country deserve to be led by one of their own; a fellow soldier; someone who understands the daily sacrifices made by our veterans; not someone who has spent the last 4 years in a cushy office at Texas A & M University. Despite Bush’s denials, the change of leadership was under discussion for weeks. The choice of Gates to lead the military is no different than hiring Michael Brown to head FEMA or Harriet Meyers to sit on the Supreme Court.

On the other side of the aisle, Nancy Pelosi believes this election was a clear choice between stay the course and cut and run. And she thinks we chose that latter. She believes that just because America spoke pretty vociferously that we are unhappy with the current state of affairs in Iraq that we want immediate retreat. So once again, the two-party system staked out positions that were at both extremes.

The 2006 mid-term election was not a statement about the job that either party has done representing the will of the people. It wasn’t about who will keep us safer or which party’s strategy is the key to solving the problem of Iraq. It wasn’t an expression of hope and it wasn’t the order to retreat. It was an exercise in futility by the American electorate and a clear indication that they ended up –once again– choosing a candidate based on the belief that they couldn’t possibly do any worse than the incumbent.