Now that voters have shifted power in both houses of Congress to Democratic control, can a president of one party and a legislature led by the other play nicely enough to accomplish anything in the next two years?
President Bush tried to move past the bitter tone of the campaign within hours of its end by granting a top demand of the Democrats: The ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. And he invited newly empowered Democratic leaders to lunch at the White House – serving Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi her favorite food: chocolate.
For her part, Pelosi stopped calling Bush incompetent and dangerous. Instead, she made a point of deeming the lunch lovely and speaking of “some areas” where bipartisanship was possible.
Bush also telephoned Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to congratulate him on the Democrats’ takeover in the Senate. The switch in power in that chamber became sure Wednesday night, when enough votes were counted to confirm the defeat of Virginia GOP Sen. George Allen.
Reid, likely to be majority leader in the new Senate, is scheduled for his own meeting with Bush at the White House today.
Yet to be seen is whether the conciliatory gestures and promises to work together can endure long enough for Congress and the president to produce laws addressing big problems and restore trust in the government.
At the University, student political leaders were cautiously optimistic that compromise will reign in Washington.
“At first, I was upset of course as a Republican. I would like to see what they are going to do,” said Andrew “Shadow” Hill, the University’s College Republicans president. “A lot of the Democrats that were elected were real conservative. I’m anxious to see if they can shape things up like they say they can.”
He wants to see if they can reduce the national deficit as they said they will, he said.
“It’s going to be real interesting to see what happens in next two years,” Hill said.
College Democrats President Ben Lenet said Bush’s tone during his press conference Wednesday suggested he would be willing to compromise.
“I’m going to take the president at his word that he said what he means about his bi-partisan nature,” Lenet said.
Lenet said Democrats would not compromise in negotiating lower prescription drug prices, getting Americans a right to health care and fighting for increases in the minimum wage.
They will also “push for sweeping ethics and lobbying reform,” he said.
“I saw this coming,” he said. “The American people have always been looking for health care. We’ve always said we need a new direction in Iraq.”
Democratic legislators won’t look for revenge after being cut out of decision making in recent years, Lenet said.
“If Republicans want to join us in helping middle-class Americans, they’re more than welcome,” he said.
Role models exist, and so does the motivation to follow their lead as the two years before the 2008 elections tick away. Providing the opportunity is a slate of stalled legislation on immigration, Iraq and terrorism that voters named as important in exit polls this week.
Bush and Congress might follow the lead of President Eisenhower and the new Democratic majority of 1954, which established the Interstate highway system less than two years later.
They can look to President Nixon, who signed into law major environmental initiatives – the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency – negotiated with Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill.
Ronald Reagan and the Democratic House and Senate passed legislation sustaining Social Security for another three decades. A key deficit reduction program and the Americans With Disabilities Act became law when Democrats ran the Congress and Bush’s father was president.
And in the 1990s, President Clinton and a new Republican majority overhauled the nation’s welfare laws, an achievement each side hailed as one of its best.
Many experts say that Democrats and Republicans are too polarized for that to happen now, despite the initial overtures of good will.
“White House officials do not expect that a Democratic-controlled Congress would work with them in any sincere or meaningful way,” said George C. Edwards III, a political science professor at Texas A&M University. “True or not, this perception could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Democrats admit to struggling with the temptation to get even for six years of being shut out of final negotiations with the White House and congressional Republicans on major issues like homeland security, tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug program.
But both Bush and the Democrats have reasons to mend fences. In the twilight of a wartime presidency, Bush could polish his legacy by reviving his uniter-not-a-divider campaign promise of 2000.
Lawmakers in both parties, some of them beginning what amounts to a two-year job interview for the presidency, also have an incentive to move away from confrontation politics. If they need a reminder, they might look at the 61 percent disapproval rating Congress received in the exit polls this week.
As for Bush, he’s got a long way to build on the 43 percent approval rating those same polls gave him.
“There’s no way in the world that Democrats can achieve anything if we try to get even,” cautioned Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the likely next chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
The Associated Press contributed to this report