Back for four years, more powerful than ever. Who's calling Bush an idiot now?

THE LAVISH American presidential inaugural celebrations that will be witnessed this week were championed by Warren Harding. In 1921, when Congress refused to finance his plans for a grand parade, he ignored it and went to the private sector to raise funds for an extravaganza. He was not, alas, much of an orator or a president. A contemporary politician remarked: “His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.” Ouch.

By contrast, George Washington offered the shortest inaugural address to his fellow countrymen. In his first, he had stunned them by announcing that he would not accept a salary (only John F. Kennedy in recent decades has been similarly inexpensive). In his second, however, with a similar spirit of economy, he produced a mere 135 words. Yet, if inclined, George W. Bush could comfortably beat that record in Washington on Thursday. He might legitimately stand up and state in five blunt words: “I own this town now” and then sit down again.

And for the next 18 months or so he indeed will. After that, the collective attention of American politics will turn to the mid-term elections of 2006 and from there to the identity of Mr Bush’s successor. That obsession will be intense because for the first time since 1952 neither the sitting President nor his Vice-President will be nominated for the Oval Office. Dick Cheney will be the first Vice-President to a two-term president to disavow completely a bid for the top slot since Thomas R. Marshall, who served under Woodrow Wilson, Harding’s predecessor.

Yet for Mr Bush to dominate the American (and hence, global) scene for almost two years more is an extraordinary achievement. Most second-term presidencies are pale imitations of the first four years in power. They have, historically, been undercut by three factors: agenda exhaustion, personnel depletion and congressional erosion.

The agenda exhaustion comes because by the fifth year of his tenure, either the principal parts of a presidential programme have been enacted (for example, Ronald Reagan’s economic package of 1981), or it is obvious that they will never make it into legislation (Bill Clinton and healthcare by 1994). The personnel depletion follows from the trend that while incoming presidents can regularly persuade men and women of high standing to work for them, by the second term most of these characters have departed and their replacements are not as impressive.

The most important element, though, is congressional erosion. When Dwight Eisenhower was re-elected in 1956 the opposition Democrats were also re-elected to control Congress. The same pattern occurred for Richard Nixon 16 years later. In 1984 Ronald Reagan stormed to a massive victory but his Democratic foes maintained command of the House of Representatives and cut the Republican advantage in the Senate. In 1996 Mr Clinton obtained a further term, but so did the Republicans who held court over both chambers on Capitol Hill. Second terms usually means stalemate.

It is this combination of factors that has compelled so many second-term presidents to retreat into the role of constitutional monarch at home, throw themselves into international relations to compensate and embark on the (usually fruitless) attempt to shape their own legacy. They become progressively less consequential figures as every second ticks away towards their mandatory retirement. Congress marginalises the normal second-term president on the home front. The intransigence of other presidents and prime ministers frequently frustrates his efforts to cast himself as a “peacemaker” overseas.

None of these constraints applies to this President. He still has plenty of proposals for domestic policy left in him. These range from making permanent tax cuts that were passed in his opening term and the partial privatisation of American pensions to his ambition to curtail the outrageous costs of the US legal system. His new Cabinet members are not noticeably weaker than his previous colleagues. His party runs each branch of Congress and, thanks to the November election results, with greater majorities. For the first time since 1937 a re-elected president who has been in Washington for four years starts again with congressional enhancement, not erosion.

This presidency will thus be different. Mr Bush will be more active at home than is typical of second-term chief executives. He will not be forced to immerse himself in foreign affairs and, when he does, the limitations on him will largely be practical (particularly the course of events in Iraq) and not political. He may also have a very distinct notion of what he wants his legacy to be than other presidents. Rather than engage in the implausible pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize, he might aspire to be remembered as the man who won the War on Terror. It is unlikely that he will invade any more rogue states, but that is mostly because such ventures will either be deemed unnecessary or unfeasible.

How much Mr Bush will do in his remaining time is, therefore, unpredictable. He may, once again, break the rules of American politics and prove that it is possible to maintain momentum. The wild card here is scandal. It has been the curse of second-term Administrations. It embarrassed Eisenhower, triggered the resignation of Nixon, shook the Reagan White House to its foundations and led Mr Clinton to be impeached by the House of Representatives before being acquitted in the Senate. If he can avoid such ethical quicksand, this President’s final few years in office could be surprisingly successful.

Mr Bush’s personal authority, at least until 2007, may be really exceptional. Only Franklin D. Roosevelt has been equivalently placed in the past 100 years. This might oblige his many vocal critics, who have habitually mocked him, to deliver their own five-word speech this Thursday. It should read: “He is not an idiot.”

"After that, the collective attention of American politics will turn to the mid-term elections of 2006 and from there to the identity of Mr Bush’s successor. That obsession will be intense because for the first time since 1952 neither the sitting President nor his Vice-President will be nominated for the Oval Office. Dick Cheney will be the first Vice-President to a two-term president to disavow completely a bid for the top slot since Thomas R. Marshall, who served under Woodrow Wilson, Harding’s predecessor."

For the moment, our success is masking a forthcoming problem. We currently control the House, Senate, Presidency, most state governorships, and most state legislatures. Moreover, we *will* gain a few additional Senate (due to cycles and demograpics) and House seats (due to our edge in earlier redistricting, retiring incumbents, etc.) in 2006.

By all appearances, we will be successfully advancing our Right Wing power. Sadly, these very real advances will continue to mask our problem for 2008.

And unless we successfully address that problem *now*, we're either going to be faced with nominating a moderate or liberal Republican for President in 2008, or else we will end up nominating a Barry Goldwater style conservative who will get crushed in the general Presidential election.

The problem, of course, is that we don't have a top-tier Conservative in position to run in 2008. VP Cheney, Justice Scalia, Justic Thomas, and Secretary Rumsfeld aren't going for the White House.

We have to drop down in national status to Senator Frist, Congressman DeLay, or Congressman Hastert to have a top-tier conservative running in '08...and it's only due to the Kerrick scandal that they would even be competitive in our primaries with Giuliani. Should McCain's health hold up, he'll be difficult for any of our 2nd tier conservatives to beat in the primaries...and such a win over MCCain by our 2nd-tier right wing would risk national electoral disaster in the general election....where we risk facing a very moderate Democratic Party challenge from Evan Bayh.

Can our right wing hero DeLay really beat the left's moderate hero Bayh in a national election? Could DeLay even win our Party's nomination over a McCain or Giuliani?

So from several different angles we are facing the likelihood that 2006 is our right-wing zenith. Because our Conservative A-Team is in no position (for a variety of different personal reasons) to run for the Presidency in 2008, it looks to me as though we currently will either run a big-name moderate such as McCain or Giuliani, or else we'll run a 2nd-tier national conservative name such as DeLay or Hastert who will have less electoral success against Bayh than Goldwater against LBJ.

...And in either case, that means that our right-wing gets kicked in the teeth in 2008...despite what will appear to be amazing successes for our ideology through the 2006 elections.

Consider: by 2006 we'll have voted to cap medical malpractice awards, i.e. we'll have our first major national tort reform on the law books. We'll have our Social Security system partially privatized, too. We'll have a fully functioning and deployed national missile defense system, and we'll be pushing for to repeal the entire national income tax code in favor of either a flat tax or a national sales tax.

We'll probably even have at least a national inner-city pilot program for school vouchers in place, as well. Faith-based charities will be funded.

Afghanistan will be an unchallenged success by 2006, and Iraq's fledgling democracy will make the critics of our policy there wince.

No doubt we'll have made some additional progress on banning more abortions, and we'll probably have even put in a new Conservative Supreme Court Justice or two.

In the face of all of our right-wing successes, who would dare think that we had a problem going into 2008?

Yet we do. As things stand today we are going to step *back* from our rightward shift under any reasonable Presidential scenario for 2008.

Houston, we have a problem.

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