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Richard Reeves
Nov. 10, 2006 -- NEW YORK -- Two years ago, after George Bush's re-election as president and a Republican sweep of both houses of Congress, the leader of the Democratic minority in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, called together a council of political consultants and asked them what her party had to do to win in 2006.
Remember, this was when the conventional wisdom was that the Democrats could never win the House again because Republicans, led then by Rep. Tom DeLay, had cleverly redistricted and gerrymandered so many of the 435 districts. DeLay, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney were being hailed as geniuses. Republicans had all the money. The Democrats were living in the past. The Democrats were too weak on national security. Blah! Blah! Blah!
The consultants said what they always say: Destroy your opponent — and hire us to make television commercials doing that. To be specific, as The New York Times reported, they told her: "You've got to take down the president."
This time they were right, as a stopped clock is twice a day. But they and leaders of the whipped and passive Democratic Party never dreamed that Bush was going to take himself down, with a great deal of help from his friends, particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and DeLay. The Republicans rode away on the four horsemen of their own apocalypse: Ignorance, Arrogance, Greed and Incompetence.
