I was watching various election returns last Tuesday night like a hawk, but then suddenly noticed a defeat of an incumbent that I did not expect. The question I find myself asking after further reflection is this: what kind of Congress do we want?

Jim Leach, the long-tenured Republican from Iowa's 2nd District, and chair of a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, lost his bid for re-election. He ran a clean campaign that steered clear of negative invective as he always had, but was unseated by a Democrat international relations professor David Loebsack, who accused him of being an enabler for the Bush administration, in spite of Leach's opposition to the Iraq War. He was a victim of the 2000 redistricting project, losing his original home district to recently defeated Iowa gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle, althoug he succeeded in getting the liberal Iowa City-Cedar Rapids environment to send him back to Washington twice now.

Further east, but still in the Midwest, we take a look back at Jean Schmidt, in Ohio's 2nd, the not so swift Republican Congresswoman who called Jack Murtha a coward on the House floor. I can't say much about Schmidt that Matt Taibbi didn't say in his attempt at a pre-election eulogy for her in Rolling Stone last week, but suffice to say that Schmidt is the embodiment of the Rove Republican with love only for power in her heart, and a lack of any clear vision that isn't handed to her in morning talking points drifting out of the White House. One has to wonder whether Schmidt ever would have been electable in any circumstance if the Congressman from her district, Rob Porter, hadn't stepped down to become US Trade Representative.

In Schmidt's seeming victory (the final count isn't back yet, but this one seems unlikely to turn over), and Leach's defeat, it's evident to see that there's going to be an opposition party in the House of Representatives that is short, brutish, and nasty. The state of nature may prevail on the House's Republican side. While it's nice to have the calmer Chris Shays around, having the excitable and spongy-brained Schmidt in office leads you to think that the daggers are going to be out, and that the House Republicans are not going to be concerned with governing our country in a sound manner. Instead, they are going to perform the political equivalent of what we see the sectarian death squads carrying out on a daily basis in Iraq - promoting a prevalence of instability so that any would-be source of political strength and coherence is undermined the moment it shows itself. Karl Rove is our nation's Moqtada al-Sadr, after all, and the Mean Jean Schmidts will be the leaders of his anti-Democrat majority militia.

It'd be great if Jim Leach is selected as US Ambassador to the UN as Steve Clemons says is now being promoted by some wise heads in the House. But without leaders like Leach in the House, you can expect the 110th to be a bruising time, a morass that even the most honest of Democrats will have trouble protecting themselves from. While we may believe that the Schmidts will make the Republican Party look even worse as we head in 2008, there are urgent matters in this country requiring coherent discourse and careful governance. And with an angry and belligerently idiotic vanguard leading the opposition party, we are likely to see the quality of life in our country slide for another two years.