Analysis: An issue-less election?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The passing of the year brings with it an end to the legislative rough and tumble that has marked much of 2003 in Washington. The New Year brings with it the certainty of a national election, one of potentially tremendous significance.

For the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was president, the GOP has maintained a clear -- if narrow -- congressional majority while holding the White House, something some Democrats have taken to calling "the trifecta." Whether the Republicans can maintain or increase their majority in Congress and hold on to the presidency is subject to more speculation in political circles than most reports suggests.

Most estimates maintain that the country remains evenly divided and polarized. In some states demographic realities -- the way the ideological leanings of New York City residents tilt the politics of New York state or how the Chicago vote effects statewide returns in Illinois -- allow for a fairly accurate prediction of next year's electoral outcomes. For Democrats, the party's urban core remains its biggest strength.

Polarization is also present in the states likely to determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Nevada, where traditional political leanings are in flux.

The GOP may experience a downside in Sunbelt states like Nevada, traditionally Republican in presidential voting. The party has yet to figure out a way to contend with the flood of Latino immigrants that is diluting their historic partisan advantage.

For Democrats, who now generally concede that the American South is lost to them unless there is a southerner at the top of the ticket, the downside is the tremendous gender gap among white male voters. In states like Wisconsin and Minnesota the party's failure to provide urban and rural voters with an agenda worth voting for has cost them at the ballot box.

Most presidential contests break down one of two ways: into elections where victory lies in bringing out the political base and those where presidential year voters who lack strong ideological or partisan preferences are motivated to vote.

The next presidential contest will be a mix of both types, a rarity in American politics. Electoral analysts say the Republicans and the Democrats each have a strong and polarized base amounting to about 45 percent of the total electorate, meaning a swing vote of about 8 percent to 10 percent could decide the outcome.

Issues are a typically important factor in bringing out voters but 2004 may be shaping up as an almost issue-less election. One reason for that is the timing, layered over the partisan divide.

"It's going to be a short year as far as actually legislative activity is concerned," said Danielle Doane of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. "Everything substantive is likely to be wrapped up by July at the latest," she says, "because the politics of the year will dictate the legislative agenda."

The director of conservative think tank's relations with the House of Representatives, Doane believes that 2004 "will be the year of the sound bite" rather than a year of major legislative change.

Peter Fenn, a Democrat consultant and frequent television pundit, is of similar mind. "I think the way the political class has flipped all over the place about what is going to matter in the 2004 election is sort of interesting," Fenn says. "There are bunches of people who believe the election is going to be about 'It's the economy -- stupid.' Then they say, 'It's the war -- stupid.' They keep flipping back and forth on it."

"People are caught up in the emotion of the moment," he says, suggesting the emphasis may be misplaced. "You have to look, not at where we are right now, but at where the American people are going to be six months down the road." As Penn puts it, the capture of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein -- which gave Bush a bounce in his job approval numbers -- did not change the issues that most people said were most important to them.

"The surveys showed that 25 percent of the people still said the economy and jobs were their biggest concerns and another 16 percent said health," he says, adding, "The war was like -- at 6 percent! That tells you something."

Doane and Fenn both believe that federal spending may be the sleeper issue of the election. For Fenn, it is the idea that increased spending and congressional pork barrel may, if the American people are not confident in the country's economic future, wear down their support for the GOP. For Doane, the issue reflects a lack of vision among the leaders of the GOP that could discourage the base vote from turning out.

"Congress will address spending in some form," she says, "but the small ideas are not going to stop the burgeoning deficit. The Republicans needs to come up with a major initiative to confront runaway spending in a way that really gets to the heart of the matter rather than papering it over."

"What people are looking for," she says, "is a vision, a plan to address the problem." If they can do that, Doane adds, they will maintain or even expand on their current level of support, creating an environment in which, for the first time since the 1920s, the Republicans can keep hold of Congress and the White House is successive national elections.