The unknown senator who has restored division to Washington

NOW it gets interesting" is the tagline of a US management consultancy advert, and you could say the same for American politics. The decision yesterday by James Jeffords, a Republican senator from Vermont, to give up his party affiliation and sit as an independent, has thrown what had seemed to be a settled Washington picture into unexpected turmoil.

The Senate had been split 50-50, but since it is chaired by Dick Cheney, the Republicans controlled the chamber, as they do the House of Representatives - and, of course, since last year's election, the White House. But now that the Republicans have lost Jeffords, control of the Senate will revert to the Democrats. As Bush prepares for his first visit to Europe as president - he will attend a Nato summit and a US-EU meeting next month - it's worth asking whether the drama of this week has changed the outlook for his presidency.

Note first, that a Washington where power is divided between the parties is the Washington that most of us know. Only for six years out of the last 30 has the same party run the White House and both chambers of Congress - during the presidency of Jimmy Carter and the first two years of Bill Clinton's.

Moreover, though not one American in a hundred would have recognised Jeffords in a crowd, political insiders have always known that he hardly felt at home in the modern Republican party.

Many of today's leading Republicans are from the South, often aligned with the Christian Right, and conservative more in social matters than in economics.

Vermont Republicans, by contrast, are the last custodians of those admirable, old-fashioned Yankee virtues - thrift, combined with a modest social liberalism. Since he was first elected to the House in 1974 (he became a Senator in 1988), Jeffords has been conservative on economic matters and moderate-to-liberal on cultural and foreign policies. He has supported abortion rights and gun control legislation, fell out with Bush over funds for those with special educational needs and, in one of the bellwether political contests of the last 25 years, in 1991 voted against the nomination to the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, a black Republican bitterly opposed by Democrats and feminists.

In short, even had he kept the Republican whip, Jeffords was likely to find himself opposed to many aspects of Bush's programme. That doesn't mean that Democratic control of the Senate counts for nothing; committee chairmanships will now change, and Bush's ability, for example, to appoint conservatives to key judicial posts may be attenuated. But it's too early to hail a sea-change in Washington. I don't mean to argue here that Bush has failed to put his stamp on American politics. He has, but in a rather unexpected way. For eight years, America became used to the drama of the Clinton years, with all their lack of discipline, their late-night sessions with interns, pizza and Diet Coke, and their elision of the borders between politics and celebrity.

Hence, Americans have had to get used to a new mood. Others will have to do the same.

Throughout his presidency, Clinton was wildly popular in Europe. But this popularity had depth to it; it was founded on his genuine commitment to the continuing economic integration of the continent, his wish to see the ex-communist nations brought into the democratic fold, and his lack of hang-ups about the European Union playing a central role in the world.

But Clinton is gone. In European eyes, Bush doesn't have his glamour. And on global warming and missile defence, the new president has seemed to treat European sensitivities with less deference than Clinton. As Europeans debate the very nature of the European Union, they would do well to appreciate they are no longer dealing with a man whose attitude to Europe was, as Clinton's was, somewhat romantic.

Above all, when they take the measure of Bush at the summits next month, Europeans would be advised to remember that he has already significantly altered the political climate of the US. The decision of an obscure senator from one of the smallest states in the union to desert the Republican party does not change that essential truth.

Michael Elliott is editor-at-large of Time magazine. His Channel 4 film on the future of Europe is broadcast at 7pm on Sunday.

Copyright 2001
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