Broder: Congress one for the history books
The speech, entitled "American Politics: 1966 and Beyond," is part of the ongoing President's Lecture Series. Professor Earl Black, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science, introduced Broder, whom he described as "the most distinguished journalist in America."
Broder is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who has focused on national politics for 40 years. Since 1966 he has worked for the Washington Post and is, as Black said, "intimately linked with the development of the Washington Post as a paper that is just full of outstanding political reporters."
Broder is also the author of four books: The Republican Establishment , The Party's Over , Changing of the Guard and Behind the Front Page .
After a brief mention of the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Broder addressed the current political situation in America. "This Congress clearly is one for the history books," he said. He compared it to the Great Society Congress of 1964 in its ability to make important changes.
Broder said he believes that Congress will succeed in establishing a balanced budget plan and transferring many federal powers such as health care and income support for poor children and their mothers to local and state governments.
He described these changes as "remarkable" because Republicans have only a narrow majority in the House and Senate and are working under a Democratic president. He attributed this ability to make bold changes in part to the drastic defeat of Democratic incumbents in the 1994 election, which can be interpreted as a demand for change from voters.
The Contract with America, which he said the press first perceived as "the corniest photo opportunity anybody has ever staged," has also served Republicans by giving novice candidates a national platform to run on.
Strong Republican leaders like Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Majority Leader Dick Armey have also facilitated change by centralizing control.
He said the freshmen and sophomores in the House of Representatives are "truly Ronald Reagan's sons and daughters" and are, therefore, determined to carry out an agenda similar to his.
"The agenda has been updated for them by Gingrich, and Armey and others, but it is essentially the Reagan agenda -- reducing the scale of government, moving responsibilities out of Washington back to the state and local governments and, of course, reducing taxes."
Lastly, he blamed ineffective Democratic opposition to the Republican majority.
He said the House Democrats' fight for programs like school lunches and Medicare have cost them the support of moderate and conservative House Democrats. He said the Senate Democrats, on the other hand, "have chosen to play a kind of a balance of power game."
They do not block legislation, but they try to soften its edges. President Clinton, he said, is trying to find a middle ground between Gingrich and the Democrats.
"It's very hard to tell, even for people who work closely with the president from day to day, as to where the lines are actually going to be drawn," Broder said.
Broder then discussed the politics of the year ahead. He based his comments on a recent survey of "swing district" voters in six states conducted by the Washington Post . Swing voters have vacillated between the Republican and Democratic parties in the past.
From talking to these people, he got the impression that "the voters are less angry" than in 1992 or 1994 mainly because of economic improvement which has "taken some of the edge off ... the economic anxiety that was there in the early part of the '90s."
He said the swing voters were "generally supportive of the main thrust of the actions of this Congress" but concerned about programs which cut support to senior citizens and children.
Referring to Gingrich, he said that "the revolution on Capitol Hill is much more popular than its commander." Dole, he said, is "a much more familiar, and I would say more comfortable, figure to the American people," although many worry about his age and "hard-edged" public personality.
Of the people surveyed, he said that one-third "thoroughly dislike the president, I'd almost say have come to despise him on grounds of character. They just do not respect or trust him."
Though the other voters showed varying degrees of trust and support, Broder said that he believes the swing voters are "ready to consider a new president."
Broder concluded his speech with a discussion of the third-party possibility in the 1996 election. He said that a third party is a very popular idea with the American people, unless the party is associated with Ross Perot.
It would be difficult for Powell to run as an independent because he is African-American, but he has a "realistic chance of winning" the Republican nomination, Broder said. Were this to occur, he guessed that "disaffected conservatives" would form a third-party challenge led by someone like Pat Buchanan. If this party did form, Broder predicted that Powell would win the presidency.
Broder's lecture was followed by a question-and-answer session during which the audience brought up various issues such as racial disharmony, limits on student financial aid and the line-item veto.
This item appeared in the News section of the November 10, 1995 issue.
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