Report from DC - a few thoughts before heading home

A few thoughts on the events of the yesterday.

Whatever details I or anyother blogger might write about, the day was certainly historic.

Some facts about the new Congress from Mediamatters.org:

• A larger majority than Republicans had in any Congress since taking control in 1994.
  
• The first election since 1938 in which a U.S. political party retained all its House seats.
  
• Apparently only the second time in U.S. history that a "major party" survived an election without losing a single seat in either the House or the Senate.

And it all officially began yesterday. The Democrats have the (to use dubya's term) political capital to accomplish some great things. The voters, by some huge margins, swept away the elected officials they no longer supported.

I can remember (and I was reminded of this a few days ago) that just after Gerald Ford became President, he said "our long national nightmare is over." I can also remember lotsa folks, politicians and pundits alike, all relieved, all parroting the same line "The system worked." Implying, I guess, that Nixon's gross insults to the Constitution were fixed BY the Constitution and so now we can all go on with our lives - the system worked.

I'm not yet ready to say the same thing about the 110th Congress. Yes, the Democrats swept those tired old guys out of office. Yes, the Speaker of the House is, for the first time ever, a woman. Yes, the Democrats now have the Constitutional duty to oversee the shenanigans of dubya's regime, and so on. The importance of these should not be overlooked. But all that's really happened is that the party in power in Congress has changed. Nothing more.

So I can't say that the "system has worked" yet - we've only seen the promise of the system working. It won't show any evidence of "working" until things are fixed;

• in Iraq
• in The Congress
• in The White House

And with that, I'm heading back home to Pittsburgh.

Still, it was a very good day in DC.