Terry McAuliffe, the head of the Democratic National Committee, and the man who is jockeying with Tom Daschle for the most shrill man in American politics, is saying that President Bush is "adrift" on the economy.
Um, Terry, let’s see what President Bush has been up to lately, shall we? He passed Trade Promotion Authority to increase foreign trade. He passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which added new penalties for corporate crooks and strengthened government oversight of corporate accounting. He’s proposed a number of policies to strengthen the US economy – and passed several of them. All this while working across party lines on several of these bills.
What have the Democrats been doing lately? Whining about the Bush Administration. Can anyone name a single legislative victory for the Democrats in the last few months? Even those bills like the Sarbanes bill have only been passed with Presidential approval. The Democrats are committing a mortal political sin: complaining about the lack of iniative on the Republican side without having or being able to explicate their own set of policies. It’s a political strategy that can only end in failure.
McAuliffe is nothing more than a shrill partisan hack who represents the worst of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have done nothing but complain about the actions of the Bush Administration to the loss of their own policy positions. Fortunately, the Democrats lack of public trust and political capital means that even with the corporate scandals of late, their chances of retaking Congress are much slimmer than the might have been.
