The Washington Post

September 22, 2002, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B01

This Election Won't Turn on Regime Change

by Jeremy D. Rosner

As a Democratic pollster, would I rather see pictures of Kenneth Lay than Saddam Hussein dominating front pages of newspapers in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections?

Sure. Voters sensibly blame Republicans (especially in Congress) for neglecting domestic problems, such as the need to prevent corporate bandits from fleecing investors and retirees. So far, voters have been more comfortable with Republican policies on Iraq.

But does that mean the new focus on Iraq will produce GOP gains in the mid-term elections and beyond? Don't bet on it. President Bush's approval ratings might stop dropping for a while. But the country's mood and historical evidence both suggest a good year for Democrats if they follow the right course. Seven points support this conclusion. The most basic reason the conflict with Iraq won't decide this year's elections is that Democrats are likely to promote strong, sensible policies on Iraq and support a vote authorizing the use of force if Hussein continues to cling to his weapons of mass destruction programs, in violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), Sens. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and other leading Democrats now calling for a vote on Iraq before the November elections recognize that Hussein's weapons programs pose a clear threat to the United States that we must quickly eliminate, by force if necessary, and our national response will be stronger if it is explicitly backed by Congress and the American people.

The two parties have had relatively few differences on national security in recent months, and voters understand this. Our research shows that since 9/11, as Democrats and Republicans have cooperated closely on terrorism and other foreign issues, the public has mostly come to see foreign affairs as an issue without partisan coloration. Assuming that Democrats and Republicans join forces again to give the president the authority he needs, a new, bipartisan resolution on Iraq will only strengthen that perception.

Second, with Democrats and Republicans largely united on foreign challenges, Americans will mostly base their votes on the domestic issues that concern them far more -- and on which the two parties are far apart. Our surveys show that in the year since 9/11, likely voters have said, by a 2-to-1 margin, that the economy, corporate abuses and other domestic issues are more important to them than terrorism and other international issues in deciding their upcoming vote for Congress. That has remained true as attention has turned to Iraq.

And on domestic issues, the terrain continues to favor Democrats. Republicans have to answer for two years of a floundering economy, during which the country saw 2 million private-sector jobs disappear, unemployment rolls double, the stock market drop 20 percent and budget surpluses magically transformed into budget deficits -- with the help of massive Republican-sponsored tax cuts for the wealthy which threaten the safety of Social Security.

These are the fundamentals that will shape the outcome of Nov. 5, and on such issues, voters trust the Democrats. The public may turn away from these issues to Iraq for brief periods, such as when Congress or the U.N. Security Council is voting on resolutions, and at those moments the GOP may gain a tick or two on generic ballot tests. But in politics, as in business, fundamentals have a way of reasserting themselves, and voters are unlikely to let the question of a hobbled economy be swept under the rug.

A third reason that Iraq isn't likely to redound against the Democrats is that voters have seen them pushing the Bush administration toward an Iraq policy that is closer to voters' own views. It was Democrats, in large part, who prevented the administration from driving off a policy cliff by attacking Iraq without U.N. backing, without our allies, without Congress and without unified support from the American people. Solid majorities of the public felt President Bush needed to do more to build support, at home and abroad, before sending our troops into harm's way, and voters have just watched prodding by leading Democrats help ensure their views were heeded. Indeed, voters might be more cautious than lawmakers of either party. Three-quarters of the public says the United States should hold off on attacking Iraq if weapons inspectors are allowed back in.

There is a fourth dynamic at play that is likely to leave Bush and his Republican partisans with little political credit for going after Hussein. In recent focus groups we have conducted with likely voters -- all middle-class, independent and weak partisans, the very voters who are up for grabs -- when discussion turns to Iraq, many participants raise the question of why Hussein is still in power in the first place. In Des Moines, a group of younger women said: "We shouldn't have to go back in" or "they should have done it the first time." Middleaged men in Tampa echoed the sentiment: "they should have gotten him the first time"; "now they're trying to correct their mistakes." This feeling, that the second war against Iraq is necessary to make up for the defects of the first war against Iraq, is hardly likely to benefit the GOP.

Fifth, to the extent news about Iraq competes with coverage of domestic issues, Republicans are likely to pay a price of their own, as they lose the opportunity to address the electorate's sizable doubts about their party's values and priorities on domestic issues. As this election year has progressed, our research has shown double-digit leads for Democrats when we ask which party likely voters trust more on domestic priorities such as Social Security and health care, and smaller but still significant leads on education and "addressing America's own domestic problems." Republican strategists have worried about the need to close those gaps. But since America's attention has turned to Baghdad, how much have we heard about the Republican prescription drug program or Bush's education package?

Sixth, history underscores the extent to which voters view off-year elections through a domestic prism. In 1942, with a popular president leading the nation in a new, life-or-death war that the opposing party had initially resisted, Democrats nonetheless lost 45 House and nine Senate seats in that year's mid-term election. In 1990, with American troops mobilizing in the Saudi desert to drive Hussein out of Kuwait, George H.W. Bush's Republicans nonetheless lost eight House seats. And last year, just weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the entire nation rallying behind a Republican president and his party, Democrats nonetheless won the year's two gubernatorial races, in Virginia and New Jersey.

Without question, this year's election is going to be tough and close-fought. Republicans may be able to save some of their endangered seats, especially given their usual big-money advantage, supplemented by the president's non-stop fundraising, even during a time of war. But the outcome will be decided in America, not in Iraq.

Finally, looking beyond this year's elections, it is doubtful that a war in Iraq will strengthen Republicans politically over the longer term. This point goes beyond the simple recollection that the first President Bush lost his reelection bid after winning his war against Hussein.

Once the smoke clears in Iraq, our country is likely to focus on a range of questions that the war will have raised, such as:

* Why wasn't greater effort put into resolving the conflict in the Mideast, which complicates our efforts to address other threats in the region?

* Given the high costs of disarming rogue leaders once they have acquired weapons of mass destruction, why did the current administration cut funding for efforts like the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program, which aims to prevent proliferation of materials for those weapons in the first place?

* And why did the administration oppose higher auto fuel efficiency standards and faster development of renewable energy sources, which would help reduce America's vulnerability to Mideast instability and supply disruptions?

If I were a Republican, I wouldn't be too eager to face those kinds of questions.