BOB HERBERT: Fed Up With Everybody

South Bend, Indiana

In the campaign headquarters of Representative Chris Chocola, a Republican running for re-election in Indiana’s bellwether Second Congressional District, there is a large photo of Ronald Reagan on the wall, but no picture of President Bush.

Mr. Bush, once such an asset for Republican candidates, has become a potentially devastating liability for campaigns like Mr. Chocola’s.

“He’s not as popular as he was,” the congressman said in an interview, “but I would say he’s still respected.”

Mr. Chocola is in big political trouble and he knows that President Bush is much more the cause than the solution. Any mention of the Bush administration tends to turn local Republicans as chilly as the dusting of lake-effect snow that fell over South Bend the other night.

Lucy McKee, a 40-year-old part-time supermarket clerk, told me, “I voted for Bush twice. Now I just want him gone.”

Mr. Bush has come into this northern Indiana district to raise money for the Chocola campaign but he has not been asked to appear with the congressman publicly to rally the dispirited troops.

“I don’t know that it would help me,” said Mr. Chocola. He candidly acknowledged that being seen as aligned with Mr. Bush “is not as much of a positive as it used to be.”

With control of the House at stake, the G.O.P. can hardly afford to lose Mr. Chocola’s seat. Two years ago he defeated his Democratic opponent, Joe Donnelly, by roughly nine percentage points. Mr. Donnelly is his opponent again this year, and a recent public poll showed him leading Mr. Chocola by about five points. Mr. Chocola said his own internal polls showed the race as a dead heat.

Democrats seem confident they will win control of the House on Nov. 7, and Mr. Chocola is not convinced they are wrong. “If you listen to the news every night,” he said, “it would be hard to say that’s not possible.”

His district, which has been hurt by the downturn in the auto industry, is more of a bellwether than most. “If I win,” said Mr. Chocola, “then I think there is a reasonable chance we will hold the House. If I don’t, I think there’s a reasonable chance we won’t.”

To win, Mr. Chocola and the G.O.P. will have to deal with the unhappiness of voters like Ms. McKee and like Jeri Niazi, a 60-year-old South Bend resident who works as a security monitor at the University of Notre Dame and describes herself as a “lifelong registered Republican.”

“What’s happening now is frightening to me,” she said. “The war. The deficit. The cronyism. I’m the kind of Republican who signed on for balanced budgets, minimal government and letting people go about their lives. I feel like somebody has thrown away that playbook.”

Ms. Niazi said she is pro-business but she “never dreamed” that corporate interests would achieve the kind of overwhelming and corrosive influence on the federal government that they have under President Bush.

“They are cleaning up,” she said, “while people here are having a tough time making ends meet.”

The overwhelming sense I took away from interviews with voters in and around South Bend was a feeling of disillusionment with government. Republicans and Democrats spoke sourly about the Bush administration, but no one expected dramatic changes if the Democrats gained control of one or both houses of Congress. “People say the Democrats are weak, and frankly, I think they are,” said Vernon DeWitt, who recently moved to Mishawaka from St. Louis. “I’m fed up with everybody.”

The big issue here, as in most of the country, is Iraq, which will have claimed close to 3,000 American lives by the end of this year, and which has lasted almost as long as the U.S. involvement in World War II.

“The war creates stress on the electorate,” said Congressman Chocola. “I think it wears people’s patience. They don’t see a clear light at the end of the tunnel. They see every night on the news the bad things going on, and they almost never see any of the good things going on.”

It’s understood that this is a very tough political environment for Republicans. People want change. But the lack of great enthusiasm for the Democrats is an indication that the system itself is not working well, and that would be a problem more serious than even Iraq.

There are only two major parties. Where do troubled voters turn if the country is in a serious fix and neither party is seen as having an adequate solution?