A Republican Congress: The Best Thing for Obama

There are a number of problems with having a single party control both the White House and Congress.  Especially when that one party also holds filibuster-proof control of the Senate, and essentially has free reign to do whatever they please.

And it seems that the Republicans, who, after November of 2008, appeared broken and on the edge of collapse, are now on track to score some big gains in 2010, possibly taking back the Senate and/or the House.  Though honestly, I think that’s extremely unlikely.  They need to pick up 19 seats in the House of Reps (where everyone is up for re-election) and they need to pick up 6 in the Senate (where 36 Senators are up for re-election).

These numbers may not sound too small, but keep in mind that 95% of incumbents in congress win their election, as long as they run in it.  If that’s the case, even with the 2 seats that are being left by Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, they won’t have enough to win the Senate.  And in the House, if that statistic means anything, it suggests that 22 of the seats will be up for grabs.  So the Republicans need to grab 19 of them.  They have a lot of momentum, but they don’t have that much momentum.  I think what you can expect, at the very least is a more balanced Congress.

And the best thing for Obama to do right now is to give the Republicans some control.  Because if they are given actual responsibilities, then they can’t spend their time irrationally decrying every move the President makes (and when I say irrationally, I’m not referring to health care, but to silly things like wanting to address children in the public schools).  If they have things to do, they’ll have to be more productive than destructive.

Besides, when the Democrats get power, they really aren’t doing a ton of good – I refer here to Congress and not Obama – because they treat their victories over the Republicans like spoiled children would.  They’re vindictive and wasteful and have almost no foresight.

So if Obama’s looking to win in 2012, one of the best things he can do is spread the power around a little bit (like the wealth!), so he doesn’t have to take the blame for every minute thing that happens in America between 2009 and 2012.  Yeah, he might not be getting the same mandate he had for the first year or two of his term, but then again, whenever he tried to take advantage of that mandate, the Democrats in Congress more or less ruined anything he tried to push forward with politicking and general sound-byte worthlessness.