BLANKLEY: Summertime blues

OPINION:

(With apologies to George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and their 1935 classic song, “Summertime”):

Summertime,

And the living is queasy

Taxes jumpin’

And foreclosures are high

Your daddy’s broke

And your ma’s suicidal

But hush little voters

Don’t you cry

One of these elections

You’re going to rise up screaming

Then you’ll blame George Bush

And give us a bye

An’ after that election

There’ll be nothin’ can help you

With your Democratic daddy

Still standing on high.

That would seem to catch the bizarrely self-righteous tone of the message being offered to the voters this summer by the Democratic Party and its little media helpmates. The Democrats have settled on their message: If you hate what we’ve given you - just wait, ’cause there’s more where that came from. And anyway, it’s George W. Bush’s fault.

According to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, the reason the Democratic Party is trailing in the polls is because the voters are “sour” and reluctant to award Democrats for their legislative success.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, attributed her sagging approval rating to voters who are “grumpy” about the sputtering economy. I suppose there is nothing to the line going around Washington that in an effort to help Mrs. Boxer hold her California Senate seat, the White House is going to rename the San Andreas Fault “Bush’s fault.”

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on the Democratic Party’s “summer of recovery” national tour three weeks ago, blamed the lack of recovery (announcing a lack of recovery while on a recovery tour?) on the continuing effects of the “Bush recession.”

While on NBC’s “Today” show - known in the West Wing as the “home court” - the vice president was asked if the administration had done enough to address unemployment. To that puzzler he responded, “It doesn’t matter” because Mr. Bush lost all of those jobs.

Then, thinking better of his response, he corrected himself: “It matters, but it’s not enough.” Not only does the vice president not seem to be ready for prime time, he doesn’t seem to be ready for morning time.

It was about then that former Virginia Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder suggested that it might be best if Mr. Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton switch jobs in 2012 , presumably so Mr. Biden can do for our international vital interests what he is doing for the president’s domestic political interests.

But, not withstanding the vice president’s misfires, the Democrats seem to like their anti-Bush message.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California was asked if there was a limit to how long Democrats could blame Mr. Bush, her stunningly fatuous response was, “Well, it runs out when the problems go away.” Oh, for the days when President John F. Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, took personal responsibility, saying “As president, I am the responsible officer of government.”

But the Democrats seem to be quite sure that Mrs. Pelosi’s approach to leadership will appeal to the common man and woman of 2010. At the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s website, small donors are enticed to make their little contributions with the following irresistible offer:

“Team Pelosi Tote Bag: There is still time to claim one of the limited number of Team Pelosi tote bags designed exclusively by Diane Von Furstenberg. Best of all, every dollar will be used to support Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats under attack this year.” Diane von Furstenberg? What is it with the Democrats: First a Spanish holiday and now a Belgian high-fashionista tote bag. How about a tote bag from Sears or JC Penny? I know, it’s all made in China, but one could at least make a sentimental gesture to the good old USA.

More fundamentally, one has to wonder about the soundness of the Democratic Party’s central message to the voters: Don’t vote to return to the “failed policies of the past.”

Consider the following: Gallup polls have shown President Obama going from a high of 68 percent job approval to his current 43 percent. Public confidence that the country is on the right track has gone from a high in June ’09 of 45 percent right track, 45 percent wrong track to its current 32 percent right track, 61 percent wrong track. A generic ballot measuring the public’s plan to vote Republican or Democratic for Congress has changed from pro-Democrat by 48 percent to 34 percent to pro-Republican by 46 percent to 41 percent - an unprecedentedly swift 19 percent swing to the GOP. One wonders whether voters might take the admonition not to vote for the failed policies of the past to mean they should not vote for Democrats.

Perhaps the party should just spit it out: Vote Democratic for more of the same.

Tony Blankley is the author of “American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century” (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public relations firm in Washington.