Professor Gary Jacobson is a nationally sought-after expert on American politics. He’s repeatedly interviewed by The Washington Post, Newsweek, and The New York Times, among many other notable publications. He’s also written numerous research publications himself on topics including the impact of broadcast campaigning on electoral outcomes, patterns of campaign contributions, political action committees, and congressional ethics. Gary Jacobson shares his views of the 2006 elections and how they’ll impact our country and the world.

Jacobson: National politics in the final two years of the Bush administration will be far different than they would have been had Republicans retained control of Congress.  The president’s domestic agenda will be dead in the water except for legislation on which both parties can agree, a small set in recent years.  The administration will be subject to congressional probes of its decisions and policies, domestic as well as foreign, with none of the deference granted by Republicans in the previous two congresses.

Jacobson: It is not obvious that they can.  Democrats now control the agenda and can ignore Bush’s proposals if they are not popular among Democratic constituencies.  Both houses have more than enough Republicans to sustain Bush’s vetoes if the narrow Democratic majorities pass legislation he cannot accept.  Both sides may choose stalemate while angling to have it resolved by voters in their side’s favor in 2008.  However, some matters—notably the federal budget—have to be addressed, necessarily through Congress.  And historically, divided governments have made important policy innovations in areas where both parties have found it in their interest to act.

Jacobson: The election was a classic referendum on the party in power, and the electorate’s decision was, in aggregate, thumbs down. It was not an endorsement of Democratic leadership or policies, but a rejection of Republican leadership and policies.

Jacobson: Widespread unhappiness with President Bush, the Iraq War, and the performance of the Republican Congress. Bush’s approval rating in the last Gallup Poll taken before the election, 38 percent, was the lowest for any president at midterm since Harry Truman in 1950. The main reason was public disillusionment about the course of the Iraq War. Congress had even lower ratings, in the 20s, comparable to 1994, when the Democrats lost the House and Senate in a strong Republican tide. Both the spate of scandals and a sense that the 109th Congress had accomplished little contributed to Congress’s low standing with the public.

Jacobson: Pressure was building for a change in direction in Iraq well before the election and would have continued regardless of what happened in November because of the deteriorating situation there. It will clearly be more difficult for the Bush administration to stick to its current approach or to send more U.S. troops to try to turn things around in the face of an unsympathetic and skeptical Congress (and public). But so far Bush has been adamant about staying until something that can be portrayed as victory has been achieved. And the violence in Iraq, a combination of insurgency and incipient civil war among sectarian factions, will not be affected by anything the American electorate did in the midterm. Thus the election may have little effect on the war, at least in the short run.

Jacobson: Conservative judicial nominations will have a tougher time getting through the Senate, as will some other controversial executive appointees. Any tax cuts are likely to be targeted at the middle class. More attention will be paid to the environment, particularly global warming, and to alternative energy sources. The lobbying firms on K Street will be hiring a lot of Democrats.

Jacobson: One surprise was the failure of the administration’s attack on Democrats as weak on terrorism to gain any traction despite the elaborate campaign orchestrated to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 9/11. The same theme had saved Bush in 2004 but was not helpful to Republicans in 2006. Another interesting aspect of the campaign was the role of independent voters; they favored the Democrats in House races by an 18-point margin according to the exit polls and also contributed to Democratic Senate victories in several "red" states (Virginia, Missouri, Montana).

Jacobson: As an undergraduate I was interested in history, philosophy, psychology, economics, even literature, as well as politics. I found that political science drew on all of these fields in fascinating ways, and that combined they could contribute enormously to understanding human behavior in politics. So I didn’t really have to choose where to focus.

Jacobson: I see politics as essential for people to live together without killing one another despite serious disagreements on values and goals (look to Iraq to see what can happen when politics fails). At best, politics reconciles differences in ways that most people find acceptable and fair even when their own preferences do not win out. And if the decisions that result reinforce political institutions that make successful politics more likely, so much the better. Politics deteriorates when it becomes an arena for competition among venal, brutal, self-interest factions, at worst a species of gang warfare that delivers neither security nor welfare nor justice and makes the lives of ordinary people miserable.

Jacobson: There is already a long list of aspirants, and we may well be surprised (who at the comparable moment in 1990 imagined that an obscure Arkansas governor would become the next president?). But among Republicans, the leading contender now is John McCain. Rudolph Guiliani also gets good numbers in the polls but will be a hard sell to the conservative Republican base. George Allen had his prospects hurt by the election, and Bill Frist has now dropped out. Mitt Romney was probably thereby helped. Sam Brownback has declared his candidacy, and I think Newt Gingrich as well, and I expect the number of Republican aspirants to grow before the winnowing process begins at the end of 2007.

Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton currently leads the pack but carries a lot of baggage and remains a highly polarizing figure. Barak Obama is a rising star but may still be too green. John Edwards will almost certainly run and should be one of the serious candidates. Al Gore and John Kerry bear the burden of previous defeats but can’t be ruled out, although Kerry’s flubbed joke certainly hurt his prospects. As with Republicans, the Democratic field will expand for a while; Tom Vilsak will not be the last new name. But I would not be ready to make any confident prediction until late summer 2007, and even then, with the field wide open for both parties, I would probably be wrong.