Story by Chris Graham

One way to look at the 2006 midterms is to view it as being about the war in Iraq, about voters’ frustrations with the Bush administration, about Republicans letting themselves get caught up in too many scandals, about Democrats finally finding some middle-of-the-road candidates to carry the flag for them.

University of Virginia political-science professor Larry Sabato doesn’t dismiss any of these factors as having played at least something of a role in the outcome last fall that saw Democrats back in the majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1995.

But he points to another phenomenon dating back several decades that shows there could have been other forces at hand as well.

“This has been a standard in American politics for almost all of the Republic’s two-party history,” says Sabato, the author of Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency, the premise of which is that the party of a sitting incumbent two-term president almost invariably loses a significant number of seats in the midterm election of its standard-bearer’s second term.

“And it’s a natural reaction. People become aggravated at presidents for loads of reasons,” Sabato says. “Almost all our presidents become unpopular at one time or another during their terms - and the unpopularity tends to be more severe for most presidents at the end of a two-term administration. Why? Well, by that time, you’ve had an unpopular war or a sick economy or a series of scandals or some social-issue controversies that have produced unhappiness with the president. And it manifests itself in that sixth-year election.”

President Bush’s predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton, is one of the exceptions to the rule - the Democratic Party actually gained seats in the House and held its ground in the Senate in his second midterm in 1998, though Dems had already endured what you might call a Second Year Itch in 1994, losing majorities in both chambers at the midpoint of his first term.

“Elections are used by Americans and by people in other countries to send messages to their leaders,” Sabato says. “And a midterm election is perfectly positioned for that. Because presidential elections are much more about the future of the country and the importance of the presidency - but midterm elections are used for message-sending. The consequences are not enormous one way or the other. The consequences are always enormous in the selection of a president.”

Sixth Year Itch

gets into the particulars of the ‘06 race by engaging journalists and professors from across the country to write about individual congressional and governor’s races from a sort of insiders’ perspective.

“People such as myself can do national analysis - but when you look at individual races, you’re much better off going to wise observers who have a lot of experience in individual states and districts. That’s what I wanted to do,” Sabato says.

“We’ve got some national people covering the critical election of 2006 from a national perspective - but it makes little sense for somebody from Virginia to write about a Montana Senate race. You want somebody on the ground who’s observing the race - and attending rallies, and talking to the candidates on a regular basis.

“There are trends within both parties that are national in scope and that affect all the states. The states are not totally homogenized. You may have McDonalds and Holiday Inns everywhere, but you still have a unique political culture in each of the 50 states - and to some degree, you have a unique culture in each of the 435 House of Representatives districts,” Sabato says.

“Having said that, there are national trends that affect everybody - and a rising tide will lift a party, and will lift all the party’s candidates. That’s what happened for the Democrats in 2006 - that’s what happened for the Republicans in 1994. Those were rising-tide elections. Most elections aren’t like that. Most elections are district-by-district, state-by-state - they’re a patchwork of local contests,” Sabato says.

“Most of what happens in a campaign never gets into print. And that always surprises people - because they think the coverage is overwhelming. But in fact, most of what happens doesn’t get in - either because the information is given to you off the record, or because it may be relatively trivial, at least from the public’s perspective. Or it may involve some confidential matter. People only get a sense of what is happening - they do not get the full story. I think they get the most important elements, for the most part. This is a background book,” Sabato says.

That’s a cautionary note from Sabato - Sixth Year Itch is background, is history, but is not a pre-campaign-season guide to the 2008 elections.

“We tend to overread every election - and we also tend to assume incorrectly that the results of one election predict the results of the next election,” Sabato says. “Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it doesn’t. The 1958 midterm elections were heavily Democratic, and they did correctly project the election of John F. Kennedy - though remember it was extremely close. And that’s where the candidates matter. John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism actually cut two to three percentage points off the Democratic total. A Protestant Democrat probably would have won that election handily.

“The 1966 midterms were very substantially Republican - and yet Richard Nixon won by a hair. The 1974 midterm elections were heavily Democratic - Jimmy Carter barely beat Gerald Ford. And what about 1994-1996? You had a massive Republican landslide in 1994, and Bill Clinton won easily in 1996,” Sabato says.
“You can be mislead by the results of one election if you consider those results predictive of the next election. So we’ll just have to see what happens,” Sabato says. “If you were to predict today, most observers would say, Well, the Democratic nominee is going to win the presidency. That seems likely, but loads of things can happen between now and November 2008 that can change that picture.

“For example, suppose President Bush in September starts withdrawing troops from Iraq. Suppose the Republicans pick one of their more broadly acceptable nominees, and the Democrats pick a more narrowly focused candidate, like Hillary Clinton. Well, Hillary Clinton is not going to get a Democratic landslide - no matter what the conditions are. She may win - maybe any Democrat would win in 2008. But it’s too early to say that,” Sabato says.

“It’s way too soon to say - and people should be cautious. I’ve lived long enough to be very cautious. I’ve learned that the way things look today has almost no relationship to the way they may look in 16 months,” Sabato says.

For further reading

Sixth Year Itch - http://centerforpolitics.org/pubs/books.htm

Filed under: 6-July 2007 Issue