Jonathan Chait Compares The November Election To WWI

From today's LAT:

I should admit that I strongly prefer that the Democrats win. If I had to sum it up in a word, I would say that the key issue in November is accountability.

Bush has put his policies before the American people three times. The first time, in 2000, he got half a million fewer votes than his opponent but won because of poorly designed ballots and voting machines in Florida. [Come on, Jon. Say it. He stole the election. It was a coup.] The next time, in 2002 (when he framed the elections as a referendum on his presidency), he derived enormous benefit from having been in office when terrorists attacked the United States. [Which, when you think about it, is pretty fucking weird, but, true, nonetheless.] The third time, in 2004, he faced a wildly inept opponent in John Kerry (and that's not just sour grapes; I said so here before the election). Bush has never been a popular president, yet he has been enormously influential both at home and overseas — in most ways, to the country's detriment. [Wrong again, Jon. In EVERY way to the country's detriment. Even a wr hawk like you can't point to even one thing Bush has done to make this country better.] Unpopularity is one thing, but a defeat at the ballot box is another, and it's the sort of negative judgment Bush badly deserves.

A second reason that Bush has been unaccountable is Congress itself. A primary role of Congress is to oversee the president through hearings, debates and investigations. Indeed, our entire political system is premised on the idea that the executive and legislative branches will clash. Under Republican control, Congress has utterly abdicated this responsibility. "This Congress doesn't see itself as an independent branch that might include criticizing an incumbent administration," said congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

It hasn't always been this way. In 1993-94, when both houses of Congress and the presidency were controlled by the Democrats, the House Government Operations Committee held 135 oversight or investigative hearings. In 2004-2005, under unified Republican government, the panel (renamed the Government Reform Committee) held just 37.

That's just one measure of the degree to which this Republican Congress has simply rolled over for the president. Partisan discipline has trumped everything, and the whole notion of checks and balances has fallen by the wayside.

Democrats are probably far too giddy about what they can accomplish if they win in November. They aren't going to be able to stop the war in Iraq, and they won't banish pork-barreling or back-scratching. But that's OK. Woodrow Wilson didn't make the world safe for democracy, but he did manage to keep a pretty noxious regime from dominating a continent.

I'd say that's about right.