Taking the high road runs risks
WASHINGTON -- What's the big insult in presidential politics these days? Republicans to Democrat Barack Obama: You voted your party line 97% of the time. Obama to Republican John McCain: You voted with President Bush 95%. So there.
Party loyalty is fair game in this unique contest. Both major parties picked reform-minded insurgents over more conventional candidates. The upshot is two candidates who are pledging open government, hammering at special interests, bragging about telling inconvenient truths and vowing to put national interests over partisan ones.
"They do not want to play the business-as-usual games in Washington," says Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who has worked on bills to improve government with both men. That appeals to voters, he says, but it's also "a dangerous road" because they're more easily accused of hypocrisy.
James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, also has worked closely with the two senators on ethics, finance and lobbying bills and says they are "legitimate leaders" in those areas. But he's skeptical about their promises and is trying to lure them to a forum this fall to explain them.
"They keep bashing lobbyists and the way Washington works," Thurber says. He wants them to be specific: "What's wrong and what would they do about it?"
The reform tradition
The two most famous reform presidents were Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt created the Food and Drug Administration, regulated railroads and dissolved monopolies. Wilson created the Federal Reserve and won passage of anti-trust and child-labor laws.
The political parallels this year are uncanny. John Milton Cooper, who wrote about the pair in The Warrior and The Priest, says Roosevelt was "a reformist president leading a conservative party" — a situation McCain would recognize — who relied on Democrats for many of his achievements. By contrast, Wilson built on his own party's reform mood. Obama is similarly "in sync with his party," Cooper says, and well positioned to win changes on health care and other issues.
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