After the elections of November 2006, Karl Rove, Republican Party strategist, left the Bush administration – for many reasons including the losses in November (“to spend more time with my family” was given as the real reason). Rove was a proponent of the “50 percent plus one” school of political advantage, which claimed that all that was important was power.
In an election power comes from having 50 percent of the votes plus the one vote that put you in the majority – once in power from that “majority”, you were in a position to create conditions that would enhance that power, to increase that majority. Obtaining a majority does not create a moral legitimacy, and to govern as if such a majority gives some “mandate” – as did Bush in 2005 after reelection – is to alienate, or simply to annoy and anger, the members of the population who had voted for the other candidate or those who had not voted, but did not support the winning candidate. If being in power (in the majority) then leads to a disregard for others who are not in power, and problems are likely to ensue – evinced by the Bush Aministration’s many scandals (outing Valerie Plame, mistreatment at Abu Ghraib) and the many problematic less-than-scandals (praising Brownie, claiming the economy was sound).
The 2008 punishment of the Republican Party was partly due to maladministration during the Bush presidency, but partly due to how people perceived the party; and Karl Rove gave a very prescient analysis of what seems to have happened, though he was talking of the hoped-for demise of the Democratic Party with the advent of a permanent Republican majority when, in a 2003 interview, he said:
In an election power comes from having 50 percent of the votes plus the one vote that put you in the majority – once in power from that “majority”, you were in a position to create conditions that would enhance that power, to increase that majority. Obtaining a majority does not create a moral legitimacy, and to govern as if such a majority gives some “mandate” – as did Bush in 2005 after reelection – is to alienate, or simply to annoy and anger, the members of the population who had voted for the other candidate or those who had not voted, but did not support the winning candidate. If being in power (in the majority) then leads to a disregard for others who are not in power, and problems are likely to ensue – evinced by the Bush Aministration’s many scandals (outing Valerie Plame, mistreatment at Abu Ghraib) and the many problematic less-than-scandals (praising Brownie, claiming the economy was sound).
The 2008 punishment of the Republican Party was partly due to maladministration during the Bush presidency, but partly due to how people perceived the party; and Karl Rove gave a very prescient analysis of what seems to have happened, though he was talking of the hoped-for demise of the Democratic Party with the advent of a permanent Republican majority when, in a 2003 interview, he said:
“I don’t think you ever kill any political party. Political parties kill themselves, or are killed, not by the other political party but by their failure to adapt to new circumstances. But do you weaken a political party, either by turning what they see as assets into liabilities, and/or by taking issues they consider to be theirs, and raiding them?” The thought brought to his round, unlined, guileless face a boyish look of pure delight. “Absolutely!” (Nicholas Lemann, “The Controller: Karl Rove is working to get George Bush reëlected, but he has bigger plans”, The New Yorker, 12 May 2003)
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