2006 General

Your humble servant at the Crystal Ball is embarrassed but compelled to admit that he is drawn to political scandal as others are to pornography. Over the decades I have published several books devoted to the subject, with the lurid titles of Feeding Frenzy, Dirty Little Secrets, and Peepshow. Yes, part of the motivation was sales potential. To be honest, the scandal books fared much better than my tomes on campaign finance, which were read solely by my immediate family, and then only under threat of excommunication. Yet it was far more than sales. The underbelly of politics attracts an observer much like the red-light district in a big city: You want to see what’s going down. And so we come to the cornucopia of scandal unfolding before us in Washington and beyond. Bribery! Sleazy lobbying! Intrigue and spies! Money laundering! Fraud! Seduction and the lure of illicit sex! And so much more…This is truly the Christmas season that keeps on giving. We leave to others the unfolding specifics of Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, CIA Leak-gate, Jack Abramoff & Company, the emerging K Street excesses in Watergate Hotel bedroom suites, and so much more. Here we simply want to share

The Crystal Ball will return soon with updated commentary and analysis for next year’s 2006 midterm elections, as well as another look to the 2008 presidential contest. In the meantime, quench your thirst for perspicacious political ponderings and predictions by attending the 8th Annual American Democracy Conference, presented by the University of Virginia Center for Politics and National Journal’s The Hotline. This year’s conference, entitled Setting the Table: The 2005 Off Year Elections and the 2006 Midterm Elections, brings together leading journalists, academics and Beltway insiders to examine the current political landscape. The event is free and open to the public with advance registration, and it will be held at the Hotel Washington on Thursday, December 1, 2005 in Washington, DC. Click here to register online or for more information. Hotel Washington 515 15th St., NW, Washington, DC Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005 9:00am – 1:15pm American Democracy Conference 2005 Agenda 8:00-9:00am Continental Breakfast 9:00-10:15am Panel Discussion I: The Declining Bush Mandate Moderator: Larry J. Sabato, Center for Politics 10:30-11:45am Panel Discussion II: The 2006 Midterms Moderator: John Mercurio, The Hotline 12:00-1:15pm Panel Discussion III: Seeing Red: What’s Next for the Republicans? Moderator: Chuck Todd, The Hotline Click here to register

Urgent MEMO to THE PRESIDENT (Or, if he is unavailable: any ol’ staffer, even the Assistant Gofer to the Under-Secretary to the Chief of Staff) From: The Crystal Ball Subject: How You Can Recover Things are bad, Mr. President. Really bad. We can tell you already know that, since it is written all over your pained expression when you appear in public. Before the past few months, you haven’t had a time of Gallup Poll testing like most of your predecessors. Because of September 11th, you spent most of the first term in Gallup’s stratosphere (the 60’s and 70’s) and you never lost the half of the populace that voted for you twice. Now the delayed tumble has come with a vengeance, and even parts of your base have melted away, leaving you mired in the mid- to upper-30’s. We’ll keep the painful numbers section short, Mr. President, because we realize that the press corps reminds you of your weakened position daily. Yet we have to show you one graph that says it all, a compilation of Gallup ratings comparing you to your four immediate two-term predecessors (Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton) from Year One through Year Five: The lesson is

Sooner or later, second-term Presidencies go downhill. But George W. Bush’s is going downhill a little too quickly for his comfort. Of the post-World War II Chief Executives, only Richard Nixon’s second term produced a sharper growth in disapproval than Bush’s. Table 1. Second Term Presidential Approval Ratings President Poll Date Approve Disapprove No Opinion Truman September 1949 51 31 16 Eisenhower September 1957 59 23 18 Johnson September 1965 64 25 11 Nixon September 1973 34 56 11 Reagan September 1985 60 30 10 Clinton September 1997 61 28 11 G.W. Bush end of Aug. 2005 45 52 3 The information in the table above is taken from surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization at similar periods in each incumbent’s second term. Not only are the approve/disapprove statistics useful for each president, but the incredibly low “no opinion” number for Bush in comparison to the others is further illustration of the current polarized partisan divide. The figure below charts Bush’s approval rating since his innaguration in 2001, as measured by the Gallup Poll. Figure 1. Bush Approval Ratings, February 2001 to September 2005 It is not hard to see why it has happened this way: Partisan Divisions The 2004

When a national emergency strikes, we can depend on our country to come together and display unparalleled generosity and thoughtfulness. We watch as stories of personal triumphs mix with unimaginable tragedies. Those whose lives have been forever altered turn to friends, communities, congregations and the nation as a whole for help; and those who have been spared search for ways to alleviate the pain of their fellow Americans. In the middle of this tragedy, generosity and eventual triumph, we see an articulation of what it truly means to be an American. As a society that embraces individuality, it can often seem that little binds us together as a collective group. But last week’s events, like those of September 11, 2001, showed that we do share a cultural bond, one that helps us to collectively rise amidst tragedy. The tie that binds Americans as a collective group is our fundamental commitment to and belief in the principles of democracy. With a representative democracy such as ours comes an expectation that our elected leaders will respond to help us in times of need; and when our representatives do not live up to our expectation, we raise our voices to be heard. Politics

“The summer wind came blowin’ in from across the sea,” as Frank Sinatra famously sang, and clearly the single most significant political development of Summer 2005 has come from abroad. No, not Iraq–there has been no change there in the dismal story of well intentioned plans gone awry, thanks to a vicious, never-ending insurgency. Rather, it’s the London bombings that will have the greatest long-term impact. With no domestic terrorist act in the U.S. since September 11, 2001, the specter of terrorism was beginning to fade a bit from our politics, with more and more Americans believing that Al Qaeda and affiliated groups had lost the capacity to pull off “the big event.” Great Britain is still America’s staunchest ally and, despite ethnic diversity aplenty in the 21st century United States, the U.K. maintains its position as the Mother Country. Most Americans of all ethnic stripes have affection for her. The brutal, deadly attacks in the heart of London have convinced Americans anew that terrorism is here to stay, much as a series of intermittent crises (Berlin, Korea, the U-2 spy plane, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Czechoslovakia and all the rest) after World War II until the fall of the

The big story of the moment–there’s always a “big story”–is the pending appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor’s successor to the Supreme Court. While the NBA held its draft last week, the White House is now moving faster than the New York Knicks’ front office to select the best lottery pick for an even more important court. A gusher of interest group reaction and partisan commentary erupted seconds after her announcement on July 1, and the speculation about the “what ifs” was a large part of it. Who will it be? Is there a “slam-dunk” candidate out there? Will Bush choose a “hard-right” candidate or a “mainstream conservative?” Will the Democrats filibuster? And so on. Of course, the answers to these questions matter. Every Justice’s character and ideological inclinations can influence major judicial decisions for decades. This is especially so concerning the replacement for the O’Connor “swing” seat. Yet there are certain immutable elements here. First, Bush almost always plays to his conservative base. It will be a major surprise if he does not do so now, with conservatives having waited many years for the opportunity to change the Court’s direction. The President needs the Right’s backing more than ever, not