Looking Back / Looking Forward

A year ago today I made some predictions as to what would happen in 2006. Let's see how I did.

- George W. Bush will still be president at the end of 2006. All of the talk about impeachment and Congressional hearings into recent revelations could make him wish he had another job, but history is on his side; no president has ever been impeached when the party he belongs to is in the majority in the House. The Republicans who preach the rule of law and rail against situational morality also have a well-entrenched instinct for protecting their own, so they will obfuscate and rationalize their way out of anything that could weaken Mr. Bush. Even if the Democrats win back the House (see below), they won't assume power until January 2007. So unless Mr. Bush either resigns or the 25th Amendment is invoked, he's safe for 2006.

Yeah, I nailed that one. And my guess is that he's safe for this year, too, in spite of my prediction about the House (see below.)

- The Democrats will make substantial gains in the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, but probably not win enough seats to take over either of them. History has shown that the party out of power wins seats in the midterm election of the second term of a president, but it's not ironclad, and past performance is no prediction of future results. Polling shows that Republicans are in trouble in a lot of districts and Mr. Bush's "political capital" is more like the federal deficit, but incumbency, like inertia, is hard to overcome. Unless the Democrats can field fifty strong candidates in a variety of districts from Maine to New Mexico, come up with an agenda that will actually be heard over the din and distortions of Fox News and the chattering classes, and get the voters to switch parties, there won't be a huge change in the House and Senate. Some well-known Republicans are in trouble -- Sen. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania and Rep. Heather Wilson in New Mexico come to mind -- but unless the wiretap case blows up into Watergate proportions or the Abramoff plea bargain takes out twenty legislators, the Republicans will still be the majority party a year from now, but not by much.

Wrong, turkey lips! And boy was I glad I was, too. I admit, though, given the Democrats' ability to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear, this one was on the money up until "macaca" and "hot teenage muscle boys" entered the picture.

- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will win re-election to the Senate from New York by a landslide. She will take her seat and defer all questions about 2008 as speculation; the line will be that she has work to do in New York. Uh huh. Her website will be accepting campaign contributions by Thanksgiving 2006.

Nailed that one, too. Not a hard one to get, though.

- Meanwhile, the Republicans will start quietly scrambling to find someone to succeed Bush in the White House, and you're going to see more trial balloons floating than at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Everyone from Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (by way of Michigan and Utah), George Allen of Virginia, and a host of the old tried-and-true names like Bill Frist, John McCain, and Gary Bauer will be popping up on the Sunday talk shows and cable channels; profiles will start to appear in news magazines, nightly news programs will have "a closer look" at some of them like Condi Rice. By this time next year desperation will have set in; the Republicans haven't had this empty a bench since 1940 when they ran Wendell Willkie. Look for a lot of furtive phone calls to Tallahassee.

I get a half-point for this one; Frist and Allen are out, but Brownback and Romney are revving up (Gary Bauer is prep team, and he's still wondering if Ted Haggard has him on speed-dial.) And the GOP still has an empty bench. Jeb is now ensconced six blocks from me in Coral Gables, and so far his toughest decision has been what to order at John Martin's Irish Pub on Miracle Mile.

- I have no clue as to what will happen in Iraq, but I'm in good company; neither do the people who are running the war.

Bingo. More's the pity.

- Several pretty white women will vanish and will become the heart and soul of cable TV news coverage and "Larry King Live" for several weeks each. Several hundred other people will also vanish without a trace, but they're not in the demographic so no one other than their families will care.

I'm sure some did, but actually what happened was that there were some pretty white women that we wished would have disappeared...or at least gotten to a nunnery, including Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the rest of the chorus line of the No-Talent Follies. Unfortunately, voyeurism and cheap-ass networks springing for "reality" shows makes that a sucker bet.

- Florida will get hit by hurricanes again. This time, though, with elections around the corner, FEMA will actually show up within the week and they'll spend more money on helping people than buying generators for gas stations. Speaking of hurricanes, there will be a lot of commemorations of the one-year anniversary of Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August with a lot of serious introspection about what has been lost, what has been recovered, and there will be a lot of "Then and Now" stories. Look for a lot of clips of people pulling the slot machines in the newly-reopened Hard Rock Cafe and Casino in Mississippi; that's where the money is going. Meanwhile, the Lower 9th Ward will still be uninhabitable.

Wrong on the first part: the worst we got was Tropical Storm Ernesto. But that didn't stop the insurance companies from corn-holing the homeowners here. And I'm sorry to say I was right on the second part. The only thing the Lower Ninth Ward was good for this year was a backdrop for John Edwards to launch his presidential campaign.

- A lot of famous people will die and there will be nostalgic memorials to them, and a lot of not-so-famous people will also leave us and touch us personally. The trick is to appreciate them while they're still here.

That was too easy. If you want to remember some of the people we lost, no one does it better than the New York Times Magazine's The Lives They Led. And on a personal note, I mourn the passing of several close friends, including Susan K who touched my life many years ago and again in recent years.

- Blogging will finally reach a saturation level that all mass media achieves: it will become so commonplace that it will lose its cool factor and people who got into it just to say they have a blog will quietly abandon them, leaving it to the dedicated, the persistent, or the creative ones to stay with it. That's not to say we won't lose some damn good people who go their own way (farmer, I wish you were still here), but you'll see a leveling off and, I believe, and improvement in the quality of on-line journalism/writing/catharsis that enriches us and expands our vision. You'll still see a lot of crap, but you'll also know where to look.

Right again, although I've lived through so many trends, fads, and crazes that it's easy to peg the ones that are here to stay (the yo-yo) and those that will fade away (Pet Rock, anyone?). We've lost some good bloggers this year, but we've gained a lot of good new ones, too, and I'm happy to see there's good writing making for good reading over on the sidebar.

- Personal predictions: I'll finish Small Town Boys. A good friend and mentor will retire from my office and make it very hard to fill his place, but he's trained me well and I'll manage. Someone, somewhere, will stage a full production of Can't Live Without You. The 25th Annual William Inge Festival will be the best ever until the one in 2007. I'll actually get to work on the restoration of my Pontiac station wagon.

Let's see: wrong on Small Town Boys; I'm working on Chapter 40. Right on Bob's retirement; I do miss him, but I am managing without him. I miss his rants, though. Wrong on Can't Live Without You although I have entered it in several contests and sent it out to people who've read it and say it's a damn good play, and who am I to argue with them? I'll keep plugging it while I'm working on other things, like the musical. I was right about the Inge Festival; it was great, and the 2007 one will be even better when we honor Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (the team that brought you "Fiddler on the Roof" and "She Loves Me!"). And I actually have started work on restoring the Pontiac: the new headliner will be installed this week.

- One year from now I'll write a post just like this one, look back at this one, and think, "Gee, that was dumb."

Actually, I'm kind of surprised at how prescient I was, although a lot of them were pretty easy. Hey, it's like batting practice; sometimes you get the easy ones.

So, here we go: predictions for 2007:

- George W. Bush will still be president. He'll still be staying the bloody course, and he'll be defensive, antagonistic, and petulant towards Congress. There will be a flurry of investigations, court fights over subpoenas, hearings on TV, expressions of outrage and high dudgeon from both sides as accusations of "partisanship" and "non-cooperation" are traded back and forth. The Democrats will try hard to make their mark as the Do-Something 110th Congress and will have their fair share of grandstanding and stupid mistakes from their own members.

- The Democrats will be down to three serious contenders for the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Second tiers will be Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Joe Biden, and someone we've never thought of who will catch fire briefly over the summer and get some face time on TV. Dennis Kucinich becomes this year's Gary Bauer; no one at the national level will take him seriously, but he has a dedicated core of supporters who will keep chanting his name.

- The Republicans will still be scrambling to find someone who is both right wing enough to satisfy the Talibangelistas, moderate enough to get votes in places where the Democrats have now got a foothold, and not be a holdover from the current administration. I haven't a clue as to who that will be...and neither do they.

- Iraq: same shit, different year. As far as the administration is concerned, the ISG will go the way of the 9/11 commission; thanks for everything, now please go away. There will be more deaths, more outrages, and yet no one can offer anything more than just more of the same, and it's looking more and more like 1969 all over again in terms of the anti-war movement: it's not just for peaceniks anymore.

- I have no idea what trendy new things and buzzwords will pop up and who will gain their immortality for fifteen minutes. As someone once said, "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Prepare to be amazed.

- At least one anniversary of note is coming up in 2007: the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. There are very few cultural icons that came along in my lifetime that actually changed the way we look at music. That's one of them.

- I do predict I'll make it through another year without getting a BlackBerry. I hope.

- Personal predictions: I'll keep writing, both as a blogger and as a novelist and playwright. That's all I can promise on that score. My job will continue to be a source of satisfaction on both a personal and professional level because I have really good people to work with. We'll have our moments of Bob-level rants, but that's what makes it interesting. The Pontiac will slowly be restored and by this time next year it might even have a new paint job. The Inge Festival in April will be great, so will the shows at Stratford in August, and there might even be a production of something I wrote by the time December 31, 2007 rolls around.

- I'll do this again next year and see how I did.