Five weeks ago I was planning on writing that “as hard as getting George W. Bush elected was, the task before us all over the next four years is even harder.“
Five weeks and bajillions of court cases later, that assessment still applies, only more so.
For Bush himself, the travails of the post-election War of Succession may actually wind up playing into the style of governance that served him so well for six years in Austin—the 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate has led to the emergence of a moderate bloc that could and very well should blunt any attempt by Lost Causers on the Democrat side of the aisle to monkey-wrench Bush’s appointments. In past years I have not been a big fan of middle-ground blocs trying to blunt conservative Republicans’ efforts, and there is always the chance that the Breaux-McCain alliance could exert at least as much effort blocking conservative agenda items such as an across-the-board tax cut and Social Security reform, as slapping down the Hillary wing in its attempts, in effect, to keep Clinton appointees in office well into the Bush presidency.
However, Bush’s handling of the War of Succession tells me that he, unlike any number of other possible Republican would-be-presidents who would have quickly sabotaged themselves within days of the election, has the capability to get his program through with support from both the conservatives in the Republican Senate caucus, and the moderates in the Breaux-McCain alliance. Only time will tell, of course, but I am reasonably confident that Bush comes into the presidency with his positives intact and his baggage no heavier than if he had won in a landslide.
Indeed, we have learned more truth about the characters of both Bush and Gore after the election than we did during the normal campaign, and I think most people feel that the outcome is right for the nation, however unsightly the means. That by itself ensures a good opening position for Bush.
The Lost Causers of the Democratic Party will undoubtedly keep trying to convince America that Bush stole the election. We can expect the party’s last remaining loyal support blocs—Big Labor, Big Abortion, and the New Plantation—to wave their orange ribbons like Confederate flags at every place where two or more diehard Algoristas gather. Speaking as a yellow-dog Republican, the prospect fills me with gleeful anticipation, because if they do not move on from this defeat—as we Republicans have successfully moved on, by and large, from Bill Clinton’s impeachment acquittal—they will go down and take the party with them.
However, I have little doubt that as most rank-and-file Democrats have said all along that they will accept George W. Bush as President, the party as a whole will not permit a handful of mouth-foamers to split Democrat voters up and redistribute them to the Republicans and the Greens. The Democrats need to clean house, and I think they know it, and I think they will do it. They may even have the job sufficiently done by 2004 that not even Hillary will have a shot at their presidential nomination—but that may be giving them too much credit this early in the process.
For the activists who have come together to support George W. Bush for their myriad reasons, the outcome of the election is no more the conclusion of the job now than it was in 1994. If we allow ourselves to stand back with arms folded and wait for the Bush Administration to give us everything we may believe we’ve been promised, we’ll be letting history repeat itself. As hard as it was working on getting Bush the votes he needed to win, and as hard as it’s been enduring the five weeks of the War of Succession, the work of the next four years will be even harder.
If we blow off that responsibility, we will get what we deserve—more of the same.
