2006

Living in interesting times
There's an old Chinese curse -- so they say, anyway -- "May you live in interesting times." 2006 may be an interesting time, in all sorts of areas, in all sorts of different ways.
First, Iraq. Hard to know, now, whether the most recent elections will produce a government or just more suicide bombings. The country could totter at least some distance toward democracy or it could slip into civil war -- there are certainly enough armed militias there to start one.
William Safire, the retired New York Times columnist, but unretired enough to offer his annual column of predictions, came down on the optimistic side -- progress toward democracy, U.S. troop levels sharply lower. Let's hope he's right.
Next door, in Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's health is a worry with an election coming up and militants are winning local elections among the Palestinians. More interesting times? Could be.
Lots of changes in Europe. Germans have a new leader -- their first woman, their first from the old East (Communist) Germany. France's Jacques Chirac is in the last year of his presidency.
Britain's Tony Blair may well step down this year, although Labor will stay in power. Blair's heir apparent is Gordon Brown, now the chancellor of the exchequer, which is to say, the chief finance minister. Will he be as supportive of President Bush in Iraq as Blair was? Will the new French and German leaders be as hostile? Interesting times? Stay tuned.
And then, of course, there's the question of Iraq at home. Will the dissent continue to grow? Lyndon Johnson, at the height of Vietnam, could really only give speeches on military bases. Too many hecklers anywhere else. This president is not at that stage yet, but depending on what happens next, he could get there.
Then there's the wider question. The president seems to take the position that he is all-powerful in wartime, not subject to the checks and balances of the Congress, or the courts, or the Constitution.
The men who wrote it, of course, had rebelled against having a king, but we may have another one now, all those years later. If the Supreme Court says "No, Mr. President, you can't tap Americans' phones without a warrant," would Bush defy it? And what would happen then? Personally, I'm tired of impeachment -- and old enough to remember both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton -- but what do you do? Interesting times.
Other challenges at home: Federal spending continues to soar. Up by one-third under this president, according to one report. Vice President Dick Cheney once famously said Ronald Reagan proved deficits don't matter, and politically, that's been so. But do huge deficits eventually have economic consequences? If you and I always spent more than we make, we'd wind up in jail.
What else? We'll have a a new Supreme Court -- two new justices, at least. The Times's Safire guesses they'll use Tom Delay's Texas case to get out of the business of deciding when redrawing congressional district lines is fair.
Who could blame them? It isn't even supposed to be fair; it's the most nakedly political process there is. My own guess is, the new court will be tougher on defendants and more pro-business than the old one, but we'll see.
And finally, Congress. Lower in the polls than the president, even when he was at his lowest. For all sorts of reasons -- both parties have drawn House district lines so as to create safe seats, for instance -- it's rare for House seats to change hands. Only a handful usually do. And incumbent senators have advantages; they can usually raise a lot more money than their challengers, for instance.
If you look at the seats that are up this time, there's no reason to think the Democrats could win enough seats to take over. But every once in a while, the voters get fed up and want to throw the bums out. Iraq, the Abramoff investigations, the odd guilty plea, may just be building up to that kind of voter outrage this year. It's too early to be sure, but this may be one of those years when voters get mad, and every close race goes one way, and boom! The outs are suddenly the ins.
No way to know yet, but, hey -- interesting times.