The summer of our discontent

Something is rotten in Washington. When I left school back in May, I never would have guessed that the political quagmire would worsen. What I did not count on was both parties' stunning ability to sabotage themselves creatively. This race toward self-destruction, currently led by the Republicans, has taken place against a backdrop of simmering public discontent that has pushed legislative and executive approval ratings toward historic lows and presented us with the first election in a generation where a third-party candidate has a realistic shot at victory.

The Republican Party has largely run out of any semblance of a positive agenda and has lost, largely through its own idiocy, the ability it once had to inspire its base. Leading conservative commentators and the grassroots are disillusioned with their party leaders. Whether it is Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh pulling their hair out over immigration or Glenn Reynolds and George Will shaking their heads in disbelief over a slew of issues, the truth is that the purely negative strategy of the Republican Party has massively backfired. Even setting these problems aside, the Republican Party's series of self-inflicted scandals have ranged from Alberto Gonzales' faulty memory to Larry Craig's airport fiasco.

Across the aisle, the Democrats have fared little better in their attempts to have their cake and eat it too. Congress spent most of the summer trying to pass symbolic resolutions on Iraq once it realized that enacting meaningful change on the issue would likely prove difficult. This would be less galling if the Democrats did not have the power to end the war in Iraq by cutting off funding. Settling for symbolism when one possesses real power is a ludicrous strategy that almost no one can respect.

Not surprisingly, this attempt to try to fool the base into thinking that it is doing something without actually making hard choices did not go over well with anyone. The vaunted Netroots has been targeting "Bush Dog" Democrats, i.e. Democrats not 100 percent in lockstep on The Issue That Matters, while independents approve of Congress at rates approaching those of Republicans. In short, we have incompetent Republicans matched up against wavering Democrats.

This inability to stand up for their beliefs led economics professor Paul Krugman to ask in The New York Times if the Republicans would be able to "claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can't make up their minds." The short answer to that question is "yes." The longer answer is "definitely yes." What's more, this Republican claim would have the benefit of being based in reality.

Yet I somehow doubt that a strategy based around repeating the mantra that the Democrats are flip-floppers who will endanger our nation is going to work in 2008. For one, that's the exact same strategy that the Republicans attempted in 2006. At this point, people understand that whatever the Democrats' faults, the Republicans aren't a great alternative. Mutual disgust is a recipe for 51-49 rule. Both sides have mastered the current dynamic and are too sophisticated to allow a defeat to turn into an utter rout, meaning that unless the underlying paradigm is shifted, the status quo, or something resembling it, is all we have to look forward to.

So what could shift the paradigm? In my mind, none of the current major candidates have a shot at really changing the way things work. Despite the rhetoric, those with legitimate shots at the nominations are consummate insiders of one form or another. The only possible candidate with the ability to fundamentally alter Washington is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is post-partisan and beyond the demeaning necessities of fund-raising that control candidates' lives, so shady characters like Norman Hsu would have no place in a Bloomberg administration. He has not been afraid to speak his mind or do what he thought was right even when it wasn't popular. What's more, by forcing the candidates to campaign in more than the same handful of states, Bloomberg would force the candidates to target their appeal beyond swing-state voters to the nation at large.

I do not know if a Bloomberg run or victory is possible. The electoral planets would have to line up just right for Mayor Mike to have a real shot at the White House. However unlikely, I hope that this son of New York can turn our year of discontent into something brighter. Barry Caro is a history major from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.