Before and after the 1988 election

HOUSE

SENATE

1/8

175;

REPUBLICANS DEMOCRATS

THE AMERICAN voters gave George Bush and the Republican Party a pattern-breaking presiden­tial victory Tuesday but blurred the import of their decision by cauti­ously opting once again for divided government in Washington. The outcome of the long and expensive struggle signaled little more than the start of a new round of political warfare, one in which the White House and Congress will wrestle for control of the policy agenda and both parties will search for answers to vexing problems - like the budget deficit - which the candi­dates sidestepped on the stump.

... the evidence suggests that the preference for divided govern­ment — with Democrats looking after domestic needs in Congress and the state capitols while Repub­licans manage the economy, de­fense and foreign policy from the White House — may have had as much to do with the outcome as any impressions created by the of ten-venomous campaign. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll just before the election found voters by a 5-to-3 margin thought it better for different parties to control the White House and Congress. Ken Adams, 35, a tire-store owner in Clarkston, Ga., and pro-Bush Dem­ocrat, spoke for many when he said Tuesday, "I'd rather have a little argument going to work things out." Echoed Karen Ekegren, 54, a Chicago office worker, "It's not

good to have one party in control." Scholars of presidential elections said they were sure that in-depth analysis of the unprecedented mass of polling data this election gen­erated will demonstrate that peace and prosperity were the funda­mental forces behind Bush's victory. Six years of sustained economic growth, low inflation and declining unemployment, coupled with im­proving relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, boosted President Reagan's pop­ularity back up from its Iran-Contra lows. And as Reagan's standing rose, so did support for his loyal vice president.

William Galston, a professor of public affairs at the University of Maryland and adviser to past Dem­ocratic presidential candidates, said, "All year long, the voters felt the tension between general satis­faction with the present and vague but pervasive anxiety about the future. In the end, the present trumped the future."

That left the question of mandate open to interpretation. Paul Wey-rich, a leading conservative strat­egist, argued that "if the Democrats take the policy initiative on the basis of their projected Senate gains, they will probably get some­where with it. They could say voters were deliberately tying Bush's hands because they were worried what he might do."...

Iran-Contra: a reference to a scandal of the Reagan presidency when it was discovered that the U.S. had sold arms to Iran and illegally diverted the profits to the contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

PART C Exercises

Дата добавления: 2015-10-26