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 Editorials | Issues | November 2006 
Shades of '74 and '94?
 John Cochran - ABC News
For weeks, political pundits have been forecasting that today's election could be one of those rare "waves" in which one party is overwhelmed by a tide of voter discontent.
In recent memory there have been two such elections, one in 1974, the other in 1994. Those historic elections and the current one could have something else in common - voter unhappiness with the occupant of the White House.
The pollsters keep telling us that voters are going to punish Republicans because of the reputed mistakes of the president - an unpopular president pulling down his party.
Haven't we heard that before?
Ghosts of Watergate
You bet. Remember Richard Nixon? Much to the relief of his party, he resigned three months before the 1974 congressional election .
With a new, popular president, Gerald Ford, Republicans hoped most voters would forget about the Watergate scandal.
But a month after taking office, Ford pardoned Nixon. In an Oval Office address, President Ford said he was granting "a full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States."
Ford said he was doing this for the good of the country, because if Nixon were put on trial, "ugly passions would once again be aroused ... and our people would again be polarized in their opinions."
For weeks, Ford also had to deny that, before assuming the presidency, he had cut a deal with Nixon.
Voters had been angry with Nixon. Now they were furious with Ford, too. The Gallup poll showed his popularity plummeting from 71 percent to 49 percent.
That fall, as Ford campaigned for Republican candidates, he constantly found demonstrators protesting his pardon of Nixon, much as protestors opposed to Bush's Iraq policy dogged him this fall.
In the 1974 election, the Republicans lost five seats in the Senate and 48 in the House.
The Clinton Factor in '94
Democrats held on to the House for another 20 years until 1994. And once again, an unpopular president would be the problem.
Voters in key states did not like Bill Clinton's position on gays in the military. They also did not like the health care plan he and his wife had tried and failed to push through Congress. And they really did not like Clinton's efforts to regulate guns.
Oklahoma was a prime example. Democrat Dave McCurdy looked like a rising star, and political analysts said he should have been a shoo-in for election to the Senate.
But anyone driving through Oklahoma that fall would find billboards accusing McCurdy of being a loyal Clinton supporter. McCurdy tried desperately to separate himself from Clinton, but Republicans were relentless in painting him as "a friend of Bill's."
The Republican candidate, Jim Inhofe, told ABC News, "I'm not running against McCurdy. … I'm running against Bill Clinton."
And it worked. In Oklahoma and elsewhere voters were angry at Clinton, but he was not on the ballot that year. So they took out their anger on other Democrats.
Before the '94 election it was clear that Republicans would do well at the polls, but not even they realized how well.
The weekend before the vote, Newt Gingrich, the Republican leader in the House, told ABC News that his party would pick up a lot of Democratic seats. But Gingrich believed the GOP would probably fall short of gaining control of the House.
He was wrong. The country wanted a change.
Republicans gained 52 House seats and nine Senate seats. For the first time in 40 years, Republicans took control of both the Senate and the House.
Now, 12 years later, it is the Democrats who hope that dissatisfaction with a president will return them to power. But with polls showing that Republicans may have made gains recently, some Democrats are less confident than they were just a week ago. |
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