Ross K. Baker: Can Bush Engineer a Political Realignment Like FDR?

Ross K. Baker, in the LAT (2-27-05):

Partisan realignments, for political historians, are the stuff of which dreams are made.

When a sizable number of Americans abandon one party and embrace its opponent, it's big news. So, like vulcanologists who wait for great eruptions and astronomers who watch for eclipses, people whose job is following politics eagerly anticipate the tectonic shifts in the political loyalties of Americans.

The watch has been disappointing -- until now.

Buoyed by successes in achieving major tax cuts and adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, as well as his re-election and the success of Iraqi elections, President Bush has embarked on a two-pronged strategy to establish the GOP as America's majority party, not just for the next four years, but for a generation.

When a political party becomes dominant, it shapes national policy according to its own philosophy. The liberalism of the New Deal and World War II era was a product of the dominance of the Democrats.

A Republican dominance in 2005 and beyond might well produce more conservative social legislation, a relaxation of regulations on business and environmental rules and more truculent policy toward countries that sponsor terrorism. If he could pull it off, Bush would find himself in the select company of such presidents as Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt -- all of whom engineered realignments.

One prong of the Bush strategy is to enact policies that he believes will lure independent voters, even Democrats, to the GOP. [Policies such as Social Security reform, allowing Mexican immigrants to pply for guest-worker visas, tort reform, and weakening unions.] ...

Can the president pull off this political feat? History doesn't offer great encouragement. Realignments, when they do occur, have only followed events of the greatest magnitude, such as the Republican realignment after the Civil War. So great was the success of the GOP in winning the allegiance of Americans that between Lincoln's election in 1860 and the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912, there was only one Democratic president, Grover Cleveland.

The period of Democratic dominance began with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and accelerated with his win in 1936. It ended only with the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

A realignment of a somewhat paradoxical nature came when Democrat Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He went on to win a great victory over Barry Goldwater, but LBJ's embrace of civil rights cost the Democrats the allegiance of white voters in the South and made Dixie solid for the GOP. That has enabled the Republicans to win seven of the 10 presidential elections since 1968, but control of Congress remained beyond their grasp until 1994.

With the capture of both houses of Congress that year, some scholars and pundits proclaimed the realignment complete. But with Bill Clinton winning a second term in 1996 and Democrats still claiming the loyalty of as many voters as Republicans, a realignment akin to those of the past still seemed beyond the Republican Party's reach.