Sullivan: Boy Emperor Wins! For very good reasons

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Sunday Times of London (November 10, 2002)

Maybe now they'll take him seriously.

For the last two and a half years, American Democrats and large swathes of Europeans have essentially dismissed George W. Bush. When he wasn't a cowboy, he was a fratboy. When he wasn't a moron, he was unable to construct a simple sentence. When he wasn't promoted beyond his abilities, he was a tool of corporate interests. When he wasn't an unelected president, he was a cipher for the powerful people around him. On and on it went, and Bush didn't do much to counter it. Why should he? He knew it helped him. He knew that one of his main assets was the way in which his opponents - in the media and the Congress - under-estimated him. Every now and again, the truth slipped out, as when Tony Blair commented earlier this year that the portrait of Bush in the British press was a parody of the smart, calm, shrewd operator who had won the prime minister's confidence. But Bush, unlike his predecessor, doesn't need or want approval from his elite peers. He knew that only one relationship really mattered - which was his bond with the American people. Last week showed how deep that bond really is.

As in 2000, Bush re-wrote political history. In 2000, he should have been buried by an incumbent vice-president after eight years of unparalleled prosperity. Most political scientists predicted a Gore victory of double-digits. It ended up essentially 50-50. This time, Bush was running against history again: no Republican president had ever gained seats to win both House and Senate in his first mid-term. Moreover, the economy was in a trough, giving the opposition party even more momentum. Yet Bush bettered his 2000 performance - and the national vote tallies show a 53-47 percent split, favoring the Republicans. Even in California, with a truly dreadful Republican candidate, the sitting Democratic governor won by a narrow 5 percent. In the heartland - Minnesota, Missouri - the Republicans clawed back Senate gains. No sitting Republican governor lost. Democratic governor candidates lost in liberal states like Maryland, New York and Massachusetts. The Republicans would also have won the Senate seat in New Jersey, if the unpopular Democratic incumbent, Bob Toricelli, hadn't bowed out at the last minute. Moreover, Bush's hand was evident in many of these races. He had hand-picked candidates in places as remote as South Dakota, Minnesota and Georgia. He threw a huge amount of his political capital at the task and campaigned hard in all the tight races - and some not-so-tight ones. This was a big risk. If he'd failed, the Democrats and the media would have jumped all over his evident repudiation at the polls. But fortune often favors the brave. And the risk-taking Bush prevailed over the status-quo Democrats.

Two structural policies made victory possible. The first - and most overlooked - is Bush's tax cut. This was his first item of business when he assumed office. He focused on it hard and won its passage. Politically, it was a master-stroke. It meant that if the Democrats wanted to propose an alternative economic plan, they would have to argue for a tax hike. Some of the more honest ones argued for exactly that. Other nervous types successfully countered that campaigning to raise people's taxes is not exactly a good idea - especially in a weak economy. So the Democrats went into the election criticizing Bush's economic plans, while proposing nothing of their own. They seemed negative, whiny, and irrelevant. Their one hope for gains - exploiting the economic doldrums - was therefore obliterated early. They tried baiting the rich, but that never works in American politics. They tried pinning the recession on Bush, but everyone knew that the bubble was Clinton's legacy. Then, amazingly, they tried personally attacking the president in the press and elsewhere. Again: stupid. And their leadership was the bland leading the old. You've barely heard of Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt and wouldn't know what they stood for. The same goes for many Americans. Only Gore rose above the din, and reminded people of why they'd preferred Bush in the first place. And when disaster struck - when a Democratic senator was killed in a plane crash weeks before the election - the Democrats had to resurrect the dinosaur Walter Mondale to stand a chance. He still lost, as he deserved to. Against Reagan in 1984, Mondale lost 49 states. This time, he added a fiftieth - his own state of Minnesota. It's hard to get more pathetic than that.

Then, of course, there was the war factor. Bush essentially became president on September 20, 2001, when his war address to Congress inspired, reassured and rallied the entire nation. I sat in a room watchng him, slack-jawed, as all the Democrats around me had tears in their eyes. That bond has stuck, and, in some respects, deepened. Bush's patient but ruthless execution of the Afghan campaign, his Homeland Security proposals, his "Axis of Evil" speech, and his persistence in dealing with the Iraqi threat all built on this. Americans are not without their worries about the war; they are not gung-ho warriors. But they grasp that we live in a new and dangerous world, and they trust this president to defend them.

Bush responded by a subtle mix of tactical flexibility but long-range determination. His decision to involve the U.N. this September married an unrelenting determination to win the war with pragmatic deftness. Remember that this is a president who picked both Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell for his inner circle. He knows the importance of a good mix. At the end of last week, with similar tactics and his usual patience, he pulled off the unthinkable: U.N. support for a war to depose and disarm Saddam. In this, he was channeling the American people's concern about inaction and their instinctual desire for allies. Again, his opponents abroad under-estimated him. They thought he was a cowboy: reckless, unilateralist, impulsive. This is and always has been hooey. He's a president who simply knows how grave the danger to the West still is and who has been marshalling every possible resource - military, diplomatic, rhetorical - toward confronting it. His reaction to the election win was typical in this respect: he lay low for a day (can you imagine Clinton doing that?) and then gave a press conference with the telling phrase: "The election may be over but the terrorist threat is still real." He still gets what he's in office to accomplish. And so far, he hasn't let Americans down.

But this electoral victory also reveals his mastery of domestic politics. you can see this most dramatically when you compare the Tories with the Republicans. Bush has rallied, united and corralled a once-fractious coalition. One thing Bush would never have done is force his party to split over an issue like gay adoption. His base in the dwindling religious right is still secure. The victory in Georgia - in the Senate and governor's race - was a coup for Ralph Reed, the religious right strategist. At the same time, Bush is gay-inclusive, counting Northeastern liberal Republicans among his closest allies, installing a pro-gay moderate, Marc Racicot, as party chairman, and avoiding any difficult showdowns on the subject. Ditto his subtle outreach on race, both in backing popular policies among African-Americans, like school vouchers, and appointing some of the most high-profile black officials in American history. One reason the Democrats lost last week was that their black base didn't show up. They didn't respond to the alarms that liberal Democrats have sounded about nefarious racist Republicans. And Bush is one reason they don't buy it.

His main temptation now is hubris. The Republicans on the Hill are already murmuring about banning partial birth abortion, corporate tax breaks, and the like. Bush should restrain them. The margin is still only 53-47, and demographic trends favor the Democrats. The war is paramount - if Bush bungles Iraq, his support will evaporate. All this points to a cautious, but determined two years. He'll be able to shift the judiciary decisively away from liberal activism and has now won enormous leverage in foreign policy. If he continues to conduct the war well, and the economy revives with record low interest rates, then Bush will be extremely hard to beat in 2004. But this vote wasn't about 2004. It was about now - and the terrible decisions this young but enormously gifted president has to make in the coming weeks and months. What Americans were telling the world last week is that they like him and support him. Whatever the pundits and cynics say, this isn't Bush's war. It's Americans' war. And they intend to win it.

November 10, 2001, Sunday Times of London copyright © 2002 Andrew Sullivan

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ