Five Ways the Election Will Change Washington

Voters say they want change.

Again.

Two years after President Obama was swept into office on a message of hope, he faces what may be a historic rebuke from midterm voters, including millions of independents who supported him last time. Four years after California liberal Nancy Pelosi triumphantly claimed the House speaker's gavel for the Democrats, Ohio conservative John Boehner is poised to take it away for the Republicans.

Those reversals reflect continuing dissatisfaction with the country's course and its politics, especially as the nation struggles to recover from a deep recession. In this election, as in the past two, voters have moved toward whichever party promised to shake things up: Democrats in 2006 and 2008, Republicans in 2010.

This time, if Republicans win control of the House and shave the Democratic majority in the Senate, Obama will be forced to forge new working relationships with the GOP.

In Congress, a freshman class of Tea Party members is likely to clash not only with Democrats but also with the establishment Republicans who tried to defeat them in GOP primaries. And the capital's agenda increasingly will focus on what political scientist John Pitney calls "the politics of subtraction" — reducing federal spending.

"Part of it is profound unhappiness with how Washington is working," says Matt Bennett, a veteran of the Clinton White House and co-founder of the moderate think tank Third Way. "In '06, it was mostly a reaction to the Iraq war and hair-raising ethics violations in Congress. In '08, it was just people were fed up after eight years of (President) Bush and a stalled economy.

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"And this time, there's a sense that America is facing a tougher time than it has in modern memory," Bennett says. With unemployment at 9.6% and a foreclosure crisis that continues to spread, there is "frustration and anger and despair that people here (in Washington) aren't making their lives better."

It's been almost seven years since a majority of Americans in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll were satisfied with the nation's direction. Now, by an overwhelming 4 to 1, they are unhappy about how things are going. A majority have unfavorable views of the president, the Congress and both major political parties.

Voters are inclined to believe that Tuesday's election will make a difference.

By 49%-44%, those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month said this year's elections have a better chance than previous ones of bringing major changes to Washington.

That's 10 percentage points higher than in 1994, when Republicans took over Congress after another fierce midterm campaign. The election results that year sparked a revamped White House political strategy, launched a new generation of Republican leaders, ignited a budget showdown that briefly shut down the federal government and fueled investigations that ultimately led to President Clinton's impeachment.

Things in Washington are about to change this time, too, and not always in ways voters expect.

Here are five ways how.

1

Confront or cooperate?

During his first two years in office, Obama often acted as if he didn't need a working relationship with congressional Republicans. With big Democratic majorities in Congress — at their peaks, 60 votes in the Senate and an 81-seat advantage in the House — he could court a few moderate Republicans such as Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe in hopes of peeling off a GOP vote or two to block a filibuster or give legislation a bipartisan patina.

"The president hasn't had a lot of relations with us," California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a prospect for a Republican leadership post in the new Congress, said in an interview. "He had big Democratic majorities. It didn't seem as much that they needed us.