Bringing Sexy Back

by Daniel Bjork

On November 8th, the day after election day, I purposely walked into my political science class a few minutes late so that I could be sure to walk by my conservative professor, Dr. Woodard, with as big a grin as I could muster after my party had won sweepingly across the nation. I was as happy as Strom Thurmond at a Klan rally, even though my own state did not follow the Democratic trend…and the President was still a Republican.

In any case, it is clear the Democrats are ready to bring sexy back to Washington. With Bill Clinton not being one of the newly-elected Democrats, hopefully it will indeed be sexy - not sex - that the Democrats bring back. The last two (really six) years have been decidedly unsexy. In 2004, President Bush earned a second term by winning his first Presidential election, and it was the Republican Party which enjoyed a sweeping national victory. Since that time, not one significant piece of legislation has been passed, and no strides have been made in Iraq.

The President did his darndest to push legislation through, pushing hard in early 2005 for the privatization of social security. That plan was quickly shot down not just by Congress but by the people, who showed very little support for such a major change to the system. Earlier this year the President tried to pass immigration reform, but that was shot down by Republican extremists who believe anything short of shooting an illegal immigrant on sight is amnesty. The closest the Republicans came in the last two years to making any significant changes came last year when they attempted to make American government a system of one party rule by ending the filibuster.

The beginning of the downfall of the Republican party, I believe, came in early 2005 when Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stood on the Senate floor and declared Teri Schiavo to no longer be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). He had called an emergency session of Congress to pass legislation to make it legal for the state laws in Florida to be challenged in Federal courts to stop Teri Schiavo’s feeding tube from being pulled. The Federal government’s intervention in state law was widely unpopular, and Frist - a heart surgeon - embarrassed himself on national television by declaring he believed Teri Schiavo was not in a PVS based on a ten minute video tape, despite the opinion of several expert neurologists that she was.

This disaster put the Republicans on a slippery slope and, coupled with the President’s failed social security reform plan, made for a rough first quarter of President Bush’s second term. It never got better. There was scandal after scandal. Vice President Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove were accused of leaking the identity of a CIA agent to the press, Congressman Duke Cunningham pleaded guilty to bribery charges, many Republican Congressmen were tied to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including House Majority Leader and powerful Republican Tom DeLay, who was eventually forced to resign, and the Vice President shot a man in the face. To make matters worse the situation in Iraq was not getting better, and at times it seemed to be getting worse. To put the icing on the cake, just as the Republicans were making some headway in the polls, Republican Mark Foley was caught in September sending sexually explicit emails to a sixteen year old male congressional page.

The Democrats, on the other hand, managed to secure a victorious night on November 7th. Perhaps the best move the Democrats made was locking Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean in a closet. In the months leading up to the elections, Dean was not seen or heard from by a single voter. In an article that appeared in this very paper last February, it was yours truly who suggested that the Democrats could regain the majority in congress if they could shut Howard Dean and other far left crazy liberals up – and that’s exactly what they did. There was a small scare when another Democratic blabbermouth, John Kerry, insinuated that only those who could not make it in school wound up in the military, but by that time it was too little, too late for the Republicans. Now, sexy will officially be back in Washington.

The Democrats must take full advantage of the next two years and keep sexy in Washington. The Democrats, I believe, should pass the President’s plan for immigration reform, and they should raise the minimum wage (although whether or not the President would sign such a bill is uncertain). The Democrats should also pass legislation they know the President will not sign, such as social security reform that does not involve privatization and federal funding for stem-cell research. The Democrats must avoid raising taxes on the middle class in the next two years, and must avoid passing socially liberal legislation, such as any piece of legislation that contains the words “gay” and “marriage.” Above all else, the Democrats must make headway in Iraq, and show that they too can be strong on defense. If there is a terrorist attack on American soil in the next two years, it would damage the Democratic party in such a way that it may never fully recover.

This election does not give the Democrats a mandate on any socially liberal policy. It does, however, give the Democrats a mandate to try something different than what the Republicans have already tried. The fallout from the elections is already evident, with the terribly unsexy Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “resigning” the day after the elections and the President announcing a change in direction in Iraq after months of saying we just need to “stay the course.” For two years the Democrats have been begging for a chance and now they have it, here’s to hoping they do not blow it. Upon entering my class on November the 8th, I consoled my professor, telling him that I knew how he felt; he replied that I might get to feel it again soon. For the time being, however, sexy is back in D.C., and the Democrats’ main focus over the next two years should not be on 2007, but on 2008.