This interesting article compares the election of 2006 with 1958 when Eisenhower was president. Niall Ferguson’s thesis makes a lot of sense. We’ll find out how apt his comparison is an another week or so.

Niall Ferguson: 1958 and today’s GOP

A better analogy may be 1958, when the Republicans lost 48 House seats (giving the Democrats an unassailable majority) during Dwight Eisenhower’s second term.

The parallel is especially intriguing because it was a combination of security concerns and economic woes that did the damage then. There had been a severe recession in the winter of 1957-58. But it was foreign policy that was on many people’s minds. The previous year, the Soviets had successfully launched their Sputnik satellite, causing consternation among Americans, who had assumed their country had a built-in technological advantage in both the Cold War and the space race. Civil war was raging in Cuba; Fidel Castro was just a few months from victory. And in July, a coup d’etat had overthrown King Faisal II of — guess where? — Iraq, the prelude to the Baathist takeover of power in that country in 1963. American troops had been dispatched to Lebanon in response.

How much of this is Democratic wishful thinking and how widespread is the nation’s disillusionment with Republican foreign policy we are about to find out.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

Dave, struggling to be apolitical.