Notes

Reflections on 2006 Midterm Elections: US or Global Congress?
Weeks before the congressional midterm elections, much was said and written on the options and consequences of the 2006 elections outcome. There was considerable outrage inside US among both democrats and republicans; campaign tracts, meetings and TV shows got everybody in america exited about what is going to happen on the 7th of November. However, weighed against previous US elections it had been no new thing. The polity was going its usual way, the only difference with the past Congressional elections after the cold war, was the emergence of foreign policy as the utmost important concern in US elections. The issue of foreign policy, though worthy with regards to acting as a turning point for congressional tendency, is not the concern of the article. Instead the global reactions to the elections and especially the role of congress in global affairs are discussed.
Among branches which are active in the USA government, namely the legislative, executive and judiciary, it is the executive and the president that are in charge of foreign affairs. The constitution also gives capacity to congress and judiciary to curb the executive's adventurous decisions through legislations and budget appropriations. A very notable case where Congress stood against the president was the War Power Act (1973), after the Vietnam fiasco, which reduced the ability of presidents to enter into a war without congressional approval.

9/11 and the emergency status in america allowed Bush to acquire a green light from Congress to declare war on terror (specifically at that time on Afghanistan).
Another war, as then became clear, had not been for defending United States security and coping with the Iraqi threat. War of a worldwide emperor attracted so much criticism outside and inside america. This led many countries to feel threatened by hegemonic power in its both hard and soft power kind of dealing with the so-called global insurgent "axis of evil". The 2006 elections was an end to people's support of the "war" and several people outside US got pleased to see republicans loose.

Now among many implications of the tough "no" to republican belligerence, you can consider the election and global reactions from another perspective which is globalization. Opponents of neoliberal globalization attack the way in which globalization is giving more benefits to hegemonic powers (especially the united states) and demand restructure or abolition of international organizations in the name of a far more globally just parliament and organization. Irrespective of their criticisms towards present organizations, the solutions which are proposed are far from real and there is no roadmap proposed by the anti-globalization movement. Needless to say some scholars like Walden Bello have proposed "deglobalization" which is again definately not what would be the actual process.

The truth is, the writer believes that, US congress has replaced the international organizations like United Nations. For example, comparing the war on Iraq, if congress wouldn't normally permit the president to enter the war, Bush could have been in real trouble, but United Nations' disapproval did not cause so much problems.
The consequence of this replacement showed itself in two areas regarding Congressional election, one the global focus on the 2006 election, and the lobbyists' effort to get any point obtainable in the election.

If one considers the anxiety existing in the pre-election period and a reaction to the results, there may be a high quantity of global concern. Additional info like Middle East or Latin America reacted as if the election was theirs. To look it another way, there was so much talk of biracials and so-called non-Americans entering into Congress. One could make reference to Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans as well as Muslim-American to point how Globalized (or some would say multicultural) USA Congress is maintaining be.

There are a few ambiguities with regards to this global congress like the amount of global justice present in it, or the question of how congress would respond to its past which includes always left congress concerning with internal instead of external problems of Usa? And many other questions that would even deny such a globality. But what is obvious is the global status that congress has got and probably the 2008 presidency would get.

Javad Rad is a student of UNITED STATES Studies at Tehran University.
My Website: https://www.articlesubmited.com/