Private House Democratic polls of the 50 most competitive congressional districts project a gain of 9 to 11 seats in the 2008 elections that would be an unprecedented further surge by the party following its 2006 gain of 30 seats that won control of the House.

All previous major surges of House seats have been followed by losses in the next election. The 54-seat Republican gain in 1994 that produced GOP House control was followed by an eight-seat loss in 1996. However, the current Republican political slump, fueled by President Bush’s unpopularity, would reverse that pattern if the election were held today, according to the Democratic polls. ~Robert Novak

When you think about it, this isn’t as surprising as it might seem at first.  When in American history has any party been hitched to the reputation of a two-term President during a war that will have lasted three-quarters of the entire presidency by the time of the next election?  (Just consider that, barring drastic changes in policy, the Iraq will be almost six years old when the new President is inaugurated.)  This has never happened.  Unless you count the Kennedy and Johnson years together as a single presidency, you have to go back to 1816 to find something similar (the two-term President Madison had just concluded a divisive and largely calamitous war), but the political dynamics of the aftermath of the War of 1812 are obviously so far removed from modern American politics as to make any comparison meaningless.  Even if you use the 1968 comparison, which I have used before, the comparison is misleading insofar as the fully escalated Vietnam War was primarily the product of the Johnson administration.  If the 1968 model should have applied to any election, it ought to have applied to ’04. 

Leave aside for a moment whether the current President and war are popular (obviously, the unpopularity of both is killing the GOP), and just consider the relatively unique structure of this political situation.  There has never been a President elected twice in his own right who presided over a war this long.  Normally, Presidents either get re-elected before they get us into wars (Wilson), the wars are relatively brief (Tripoli, War of 1812, Mexico, Spain, Gulf War, Kosovo), or the wars are concluded successfully shortly after the President’s latest re-election (War of Secession, WWII).  The unpopular, less successful and/or unconstitutional wars of the modern era normally end up forcing Presidents into early retirement (Truman, Johnson).  Bush’s victory in 2004 has really thrown a wrench into the punditry works, because by all rights and according to the relevant precedents it should not have happened. 

The one bit of good news for the GOP is that the Vice President is not running, or else the presumptive Republican nominee would be directly associated with everything that has been dragging the party down.  Weirdly, every Republican candidate (except, of course, for Ron Paul) has been going out of his way to make sure that everyone knows that he associates himself with the disastrous foreign policy of this administration (subscribers can see Ross’ article from the March issue of The Atlantic that touches on this).  In some ways, this next election is shaping up to be a combination of 1920 and 1952: the repudiation of the legacy of an unpopular presidency and war (1920), but one that also takes place while the war is still going on (1952).  But in all its particulars, 2008 has no obvious parallels, which renders past patterns less useful for predicting the outcome. 

If there are already projections of additional Democratic gains in 2008, there is nothing in the presidential race at this point that suggests that there will not also be long presidential coattails for the likely Democratic winner.  Depending on events (and all other relevant caveats about predicting the future, etc.), the next election appears as if it will be something between a landslide and an epic blowout.  If 2006 was the tsunami, it appears that the GOP will still be suffering aftershock tidal surges in 2008.  What seems especially strange, then, is the sight of the Republican candidates and party leadership actively removing all of the dikes and protective barriers that might keep them from drowning when the surge comes in.