Jeffords’s move resulted in Democratic senator Thomas Daschle becoming Senate majority leader. The majority party controls the flow of legislation and holds all committee chairmanships.

Democratic Party leaders asserted that this shift would mean a change in the direction of Congress, with their party providing an antidote to what they term the "radical" policies of President George Bush. The Bush White House and Congress have been ruling from the center, however, and have taken a substantially bipartisan approach both to foreign and domestic policy. There is no sign that this course will fundamentally change.

With the Senate split evenly between the two capitalist parties, such a shift was likely to have happened at some point, and could happen again--if New Jersey Democratic senator Robert Torricelli were to resign in face of current corruption charges, if the aging Republican Strom Thurmond were to retire, or if conservative Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia switched sides.

The Republicans do not have a large enough majority, however, to guarantee they can carry most votes without support from some Democrats, a situation that makes it unlikely that the Bush administration would attempt to push substantially further to the right. Similarly, while the committee chairmanships will now be dominated by Democrats--Jeffords received a committee chairmanship as a reward for leaving the Republicans--the committees’ composition doesn’t change. They all remain split down the middle.

Opinion columnists have noted that the one beneficiary of Jeffords’s switch may be Daschle, who by becoming Senate majority leader boosts his profile and his prospects as a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2004.

With a slight Democratic majority in the upper house, Bush may run into difficulties on several nominees for high posts. But while many Bush nominations are currently stalled in Congress, several hotly contested appointments have passed with bipartisan support.

For example, sparks flew briefly over the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general, known for his anti-abortion rights stance and other sharply conservative positions, but in the end he was confirmed with support from both parties. The Senate approved Bush’s nomination of Theodore Olson for solicitor general, with Democrats Zell Miller from Georgia and Benjamin Nelson of Nebraska voting with Republicans.

Jeffords, in a May 24 press conference, said he was leaving the Republican Party because of "serious, substantive reservations" about Bush’s budget proposals and because he foresees "more instances where I will disagree with the President on very fundamental issues: the issue of choice, the direction of the judiciary, tax and spending decisions, missile defense, energy and the environment, and a host of other issues, large and small. The largest for me is education." However, he has frequently voted with Democrats during his 18-year tenure in the Senate, under administrations of both parties.

Democratic politicians have tried to paint their party in a favorable light as leading a fight against the ideological right wing in the Republican Party that they accuse Bush of caving in to.

James Carville and Paul Begala, both top White House advisors under Clinton, signed an op-ed piece in the New York Times May 27 titled "A Battle Plan for the Democrats" that states, "Democrats should use their new majority status to speak--and act--against the right-wing agenda Mr. Jeffords was protesting." They criticize Bush’s Social Security and missile proposals, and attack his budget cuts.

However, their criticism of the Republicans’ Social Security proposals is that they are too "costly." The debate between Democrats and Republicans shares the premise that Social Security--a basic entitlement of working people--must be "reformed." While Carville and Begala criticize Bush’s plan for "hand[ing] over Americans’ retirement benefits to the vagaries of the stock market," Democrats and Republicans alike make proposals that call for moving from an entitlement to private savings accounts for those individuals who can afford them, as well as a combination of cuts in pension benefits, increased employee taxation, and an older retirement age.

Similarly, the two Democratic commentators, echoed by the New York Times editors, oppose the Bush administration’s budget for, among other things, jeopardizing efforts "to put police officers on the street," a hallmark of the Clinton administration.

Many measures Bush has been pressing for take as their starting point the actions and initiatives of the Clinton administration, such as the 1996 anti-immigrant law, the dismantling of welfare, moves to establish an "intelligence czar" as part of beefing up Washington’s political police, and calls for an antimissile system.

Appearing on "Meet the Press," Daschle criticized Bush’s proposals for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which would mean a bonanza for oil companies at the expense of the environment. But the Democrats have offered no alternative to it. Responding to attacks by Energy Department secretary Spencer Abraham recently, Democrats pointed out that the Clinton-Gore White House permitted more leasing and exploration on public land than any previous administration.

Democratic posturing notwithstanding, Bush has worked with the Democrats in Congress--as he did in the Texas legislature--to get his measures passed. Bush’s tax plan passed with the votes of 12 Democrats.  
 
 
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