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 t's
a slow news day when the top story in the New York Times
is a presidential poll, especially a trumped-up one saying George
W. Bush's popularity has "diminished considerably" when in fact
it's down only 7 points, to 53 percent, over the last three months.
This is perhaps a cause for modest concern at the White House, but
no more — surely nothing that warrants the screaming, APB-treatment
of the Times.
If the Times is so desperate for a political-trend story,
it may want to examine Tuesday's special congressional election
in Virginia's fourth district, where Republican Randy Forbes defeated
Democrat Louise Lucas to take the seat held for 18 years by the
late Rep. Norman Sisisky, who died in March. Except for one thing:
Forbes won, which means his victory can't possibly be interpreted
to represent much at all.
This wasn't the case in the hours leading up to the election, when
the media was banging a steady drumbeat on the significance of the
race. Political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg called it "a sort
of referendum on George W. Bush, on the energy issue, on Social
Security, and on the direction of the country." The Los Angeles
Times labeled it "an early indicator of voter attitudes toward
Bush and his policies." On CNN, Mark Shields asked whether it was
"an early referendum on President George W. Bush." Replied his guest,
Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia: "To a certain degree
I think it is."
That's
a heavy burden for such a little election to carry, but then some
elections have greatness thrust upon them. Yet the election didn't
seem so spectacularly important to the media after Forbes won, 52
percent to 48 percent.
Last month, the Times thought the race was "a bellwether"
that would provide "an answer of sorts to the question of whether
Republicans can retain control of the House." Yesterday, though,
the story was worth a mere 236 words on page A16. Perhaps tomorrow
the Times will print a correction: "On May 20, the Times
called a Forbes-Lucas race a political 'bellwether.' Following the
GOP victory, we no longer believe this to be the case." (The coverage
elsewhere wasn't much better — the Forbes win was a below-the-fold
story in today's Roll Call, which calls itself a Capitol
Hill newspaper.)
It's easy to read too much into the result of a special election
— and Republicans should avoid doing it here. The Virginia
victory does offer a small sign of encouragement to the GOP: It's
a win in a swing district where both parties spent lots of money
and fought hard, and it increases the Republican House majority
to 222 seats (where it was before another Forbes, ex-congressman
Michael of New York, bolted the party in 1999). Republican officials
say there have been 78 special elections for the House since 1977.
Only 18 of them have changed parties, and only 3 of these switches
went to the party of the incumbent president — until Forbes.
The Republican was the underdog in other ways, too. The district
was shaped for a Democratic officeholder, nearly 40 percent of its
voters are African American, and Democrat Chuck Robb carried it
over Republican George Allen in last fall's Senate race (which Allen
won).
So the election was special. But perhaps not as special as many
of the Democrats' cheerleaders in the media once had hoped.
Bar Fight
Many of our readers are probably too young to remember this, but
there was once an organization called the American Bar Association,
and it used to rate the president's federal judicial nominees as
part of a formal screening process. But it became too politicized,
and so one of our presidents, whose name has vanished into the mists
of time, withdrew its semi-official role.
For those who think the ABA has gone the way of ABBA, the Swedish
supergroup, think again: It's still kicking around rating judicial
nominees, and just now it has gotten around to six of Bush's initial
picks. The result, according to a report by Jonahtan Ringel of American
Lawyer Media, is that all six are deemed either "qualified" or "well
qualified" for the federal bench.
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