Politi-flicks: Accept and Concess

This Midterm Election had a hell of a lot more drama than most, at least since 1994 when the Newt Gingrich-led GOP took over the House, and the final speeches, the ones that come after the votes are tallied, they weren't quite Midterm-as-usual.

Okay, so "concess" isn't really a word. But when I was a kid there were these books by Allen Drury around the house, big novels about the workings of our government circa the 1950's, his big breakthrough being Advise & Consent, all about a Machiavellian President vs. a Congressional Committee Chairman on a Secretary of State nomination.

So it feels apt in a Midterm Election to think of Congress and how it works with a President, even a rogue President, and Tuesday night was the beginning of the new novel in our national politics.

Here's Harold Ford, fresh off of losing his Senate bid in Tennessee, standing without supporters surrounding him, taking it all on himself, naked emotion. It was a hard campaign, replete with textbook GOP Southern race-baiting, and Ford was trying to make history. I'm sure another African-American candidate will follow him and win a Southern Senate seat, Harold will have opened the door for them to close the deal.

Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) lost by a landslide margin to Senator-Elect Bob Casey, but opened up his concession speech with an outpouring of graciousness towards Casey that will speak well of Rick in his future endeavors, as much as I'll probably oppose them.

Virginia was a little out of balance, with Democratic challenger Jim Webb declaring victory to his cheering campaigners maybe 18 hours in advance of official corroboration, and his trailing opponent Sen. George Allen (R-VA) being advised not to ask for a recount.

The biggest acceptance speech of the night was from the first woman in United States history to be two heartbeats away from the Presidency (Battlestar, anyone?), Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi (R-CA). It's a terrifically poised clarion call, laying out clearly the Democratic agenda the mainstream media seems to have discovered only after the election.

The biggest concession speech wasn't by any candidate who ran on the 7th. The speaker conceding was not actually losing his own job. He was accepting the "resignation" of a subordinate. He was the number one reason the Republicans suffered a historical loss, and from his behavior in this excerpt from the press conference when he announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush sure looks damned if he has to know it.

So with the loss of both Houses of Congress and a majority in Governorships (think of those 8 Dem pick-ups as eight potential 2012 Presidential candidates), it looks like Little King George is being spanked by his daddy, spanked by having to have his daddy's older wiser men come in and rule him. That's The Party moving in. That's Dick Cheney moving out. And here's the tableux that tells the story.

This watershed election may yet splash onto other shores. It seems that the Democratic tidal wave is also a political threat to another world leader. For if investigations into the selling of the Iraq War lead to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, there may be one more resignation speech yet to come.


As always, Politi-flicks is cross-posted to The Daily Reel.