Midterm wrap-up

Hear, hear...

E.J. Dionne - "Meeting in the Middle"

American voters, in their wisdom, ended an era on Tuesday. They rejected a poorly conceived war policy in Iraq that has weakened the United States. They rejected a harshly ideological approach to politics that cast opponents as enemies of the country's survival. They rejected a president so determined to win an election that he was willing to slander his opponents by saying: "The Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses." The voters decided there was no decency in that.

No longer will the national tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, be used to undermine the opposition party. It was only after he was forced to do so by an electoral defeat that President Bush called for genuine bipartisanship yesterday. Imagine what the world would look like if he had done that a year or two ago.

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This election creates an exceptional opportunity to move from blind ideology to problem-solving and from stupid divisiveness to a politics of remedy and reconciliation. The Democrats had better make it work.