Losses: Deserved And Not

Along with the number 270 (the amount of electoral votes needed to win the presidency), there has been another number that the media has been fixated on: the number 60 (the number of Senate seats that the democrats would need in order to create a filibuster-proof majority). Although the final results have not yet been tallied, and there remains an outside chance of the Democrats achieving this number, it is more likely that they will not. And, in my opinion, that would be for the best.

I could approach this topic on a philosophical level and espouse about the fundamental role of a balance of power and the need for a balance of ideals. Or I could argue that an absolute one party government is not really in the interest of any President, because it leaves them the sole source of blame for any shortcomings in office. However, the real problem, in my opinion, is that in the flood of one party over another, we find ourselves blindly removing all of the incumbents of one from office, rather than just those that are to blame for the government’s failures.

In all, the democrats will have netted anywhere from 5 to 9 seats in the senate, and the number will likely fall somewhere between those two extremes. Included in that net gain will be democratic wins that are deserved and also republican losses that are not.

In watching the election results last night I found myself vehemently rooting for the democratic challenger Kay Hagan to defeat the Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. In retrospect, Dole may very well have deserved to lose. Many campaigns may have taken negative tones, but none more so than Hagan and Dole. For her part, Hagan made a series of aggressive attacks against Dole’s residency (she had not spent much time in North Carolina since her election), her ineffectiveness in the Senate (she was ranked as the 93rd most effective senator), and argued that she had been a major proponent of the Bush policies that the country, and the state, was so displeased with. And these claims were largely true. Dole closely aligned herself with the Bush administration, and voted along with the GOP close to 90 percent of the time (departures from her party included votes such as H.R. 1, in which she voted against Republicans and Democrats alike to not adopt the recommendations made by the 9/11 commission). And when Dole launched a last second mudslinging ad against Ms. Hagan that did not sit well with voters, she all but put the nail in the coffin herself.

And then there is Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. Although I am no political strategist, I would guess that being convicted of ethics violations one week before an election would not lend itself too much to ongoing effectiveness in political office. Surprisingly, Stevens looks likely to have won Tuesday night. But, undoubtedly, he too deserved to lose. His conviction symbolizes the kind of corruption that American government needs to shed itself of in order to achieve real progress.

But, lost among the justifiable shifts in Senate seats from Republican to Democrat, there are those Republicans who do not deserve blame for the last eight years. Included in this category are Gordon Smith of Oregon (who is still in a close battle with Jeff Merkley) and John Sununu from New Hampshire (who lost to Jeanne Shaheen). Smith, a real moderate, voted along party lines only 72 percent of the time in the current congress, and Sununu, although a conservative, opposed the Bush administration on many key issues. Sununu voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, in favor of child safety locks on handguns, against the EPA delisting coal and other energy sources from the Clean Air Act, and was one of 5 Republicans who opposed the Patriot Act and voted against removing the use of the Filibuster (the “Nuclear option”). For his part, Smith joined Sununu in calling for the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, became a critic of the Iraq war and a proponent of a timetable for withdrawal, and voted in favor of stem cell research funding.

Sununu and Smith represent the kind of moderation and open-mindedness that the Republican Party will need in order to forge a new identity. And, they have exercised appropriate judgment in determining when to agree with the administration and when to oppose it. In the end, they have both been good Senators, and undeserving of the criticism being levied against Bush and the Republican Party in general. However, in any sea of change, we tend to overlook the specifics and to allow for collateral damage.

Hopefully Smith will still win, and sadly Sununu did not. These individuals could have represented the very breed of Republican that a new President Obama could have reached out to and worked with to create real bipartisanship. They could have helped create a foundation for a new Republican Party, and helped to moderate its message. But instead, Democrats saw only the number 60 rather than the record behind those they needed to overthrow to achieve it.