Blowout

Bitter spin from President Bush today couldn’t eclipse the stunning midterm elections, which became a 3-in-1 victory for Democrats:

The Dems control the House.

The Dems will likely control the Senate.

And Donald Rumsfeld is gone.

(Did you notice Bush's lie about Donald Rumsfeld? - He claimed that he waited until after the election to fire the Secretary of Defense to avoid affecting the outcome. For God's sake, just admit the election defeat and recent military editorials forced you into it.)

A sane, inclusive, pluralistic, science-believing centrist couldn’t ask for more that this historic result. But two important points need to be clarified.

Firstly, this election wasn’t only about Iraq and George Bush. As I’ve written before, people were angry at the culture of corruption in Washington--and exit polls proved it.

It was not lost on voters that the Republican-controlled Congress a) did nothing to oversee the executive branch, b) fostered a climate of lobbyist-fueled pork whose earmarks infected every spending bill, c) allowed agencies to be staffed with cronies who were inept or whose interests ran counter to the mission of those very same agencies, d) tried to bend or overlook ethics rules on a variety of fronts, e) went out of their way to exclude and belittle their Democratic counterparts, f) chose the politics of smear, spin and innuendo at the expense of honesty, g) spent their time on divisive and ultimately trivial issues instead of enacting meaningful legislation, h) spent more time campaigning back home than governing in Washington, and i) gave themselves regular, ample raises while denying any increase to the minimum wage earned by the poorest Americans.

Along with this lamentable mix, add the grinding, ongoing failure in Iraq, the disgraceful mishandling of Katrina, the endless immigration mess, the unwillingness to enact suggestions of the 9/11 commission, and dropping the ball in Afghanistan--all making us less safe.

No wonder the election was a blowout.

It was the corrupt GOP, stupid!

Secondly, this election was a cry for accountability. Many scared and shamed conservatives have been preemptively whining that the Democrats shouldn’t go on any witch hunts--“we’ve got to look forward instead of looking back.”

How absurd. When someone robs a bank and gets caught later, do we say, “forget about it, it was in the past, let’s look forward instead?” Of course not. We press charges.

People have to be held accountable for their crimes, mistakes and failed policies, whether military contractors who defrauded the government, spy agencies who have broken the law, or politicians who lied to the American people in order to pursue an otherwise untenable agenda.

Washington remains a mess. And the Democrats have an uphill battle to enact meaningful change in the face of a stubborn Bush Team, who already pledged to dig in their heels and go kicking and screaming in any direction other than their own. Bush and his cronies insist that they must “do the right thing” and “stick to their convictions” despite a broad consensus against them. They refuse to accept that their convictions are dangerously wrong and the broad consensus holds far greater wisdom than their delusional cadre of ideologues.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear a landslide will be enough to pierce the bubble of arrogance and denial surrounding the Bush Administration. But at least they no longer have Congress as a partner in crime. Things may not get better immediately, but they are far less likely to get any worse.

- JT Compton