The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

For those interested, the lad and I are back from Morocco, with my camel-damaged thigh healing slowly, very slowly.

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While this has not been a good political year for President Bush and the Republicans, the new Democratic Congress and its leadership have certainly encountered their share of political problems as well.

When the new Congress was elected in November, Democrats planned to hit the ground running with by passing numerous pieces of legislation. At the top of the list, for example, was a broadly popular increase in the federal minimum wage, which has been held at $5.15 since 1997. While the measure easily passed the House in January, it got bogged down when Senate Republicans insisted on offsetting tax breaks for small business. Wrangling over the proper taxes (and offsetting revenue increases under the Democrats' new pay/go budgeting system) has preventing the legislation from moving forward.

In fact, the Democrats so far have not been able to send any significant legislation to President Bush's desk, despite promises to act in such areas as prescription drug costs, stem cell research and student loan expenses.

Democrats have spent a great deal of time attempting to tie funding of the Iraq war to various timetables for withdrawal, as well as various pieces of unrelated domestic spending. Assuming that some restriction on the war does pass, none of the proposed measures has anywhere near the votes to override a certain veto by President Bush. And it seems unlikely, at least for now, that Democratic leaders will in the end refuse to fund the war, something that polls indicate is unpopular.

In the past week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of her senior colleagues tried their hands at diplomacy, visiting Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia among other places in an attempt to restart Mideast peace talks. She rather grandly declared, "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,"

The trip, however, produced some very negative reactions. For example, the usually liberal editorial pages of the Washington Post unloaded on the Speaker. In an piece entitled "Pratfall in Damascus," the paper noted that the Speaker had given the incorrect impression that she was transmitting a new peace initiative from Israel and asserted that her statement about the road to Damascus was "ludicrous" since the Syrian president is a "corrupt thug" more interested in escaping blame for the murder of the Lebanese president than in establishing piece. It also took Ms. Pelosi to task for attempting to impose her own foreign policy for that of Mr. Bush. It declared that the Speaker's attempt to establish her own "shadow government is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

Not surprisingly, the public is not giving the Democratic Congress high marks. In the most recent Gallup poll, the Congressional approval rating was 33% and the disapproval rating was 60%, slightly lower than President Bush's rating of 38% positive, 58% negative. These Congressional numbers are actually higher than those obtained by the Republican Congress in the months preceding the 2006 election, but that obviously isn't saying very much.

President Bush's presidency has major political problems of its own and its stock likely will only rise significantly if there is a marked improvement in Iraq. But so far the overall record of the Democratic Congress has not done much to advance the party's future prospects.