Roadmap For The Second Term

Power Line points to this interesting piece from the Times of London on the second Bush term. As the Times notes:

[President Bush] 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.

Bush’s second term is being viewed as a mandate for his policies, and given that he got a majority of the electorate for the first time since 1988 he certainly has reason to believe it. Bush can’t be more vilified by the foreign and domestic press, to no avail, so Bush will be in no mood to court the Washington establishment. Instead, it’s likely that we’ll see Bush push for his Social Security initiatives, making the tax cuts permanent, and other domestic priorities. Right now the situation in Iraq is largely in the hands of the Iraqi people. As the Iraqis take an increasing amount of responsibility for their own defense we’ll be able to slowly withdraw. Despite the constant stream of abject negativity from the press, the situation in Iraq is slowly marching towards normalcy. The terrorists are still centered in the Sunni Triangle and Iraqi forces are getting better and bolder in confronting those who would throw them into shari’a against their will.

At the same time, Bush has some problems that he needs to address. The deficit is still far too large and Bush must enforce fiscal discipline on Congress. Given that he’s hardly a miser when it comes to federal spending, it may well be the other way around. Bush has already indicated that he’s preemptively surrendering on the issue of gay marriage. While the Federal Marriage Amendement is probably a non-starter, backing off on it won’t endear Bush to the evangelical members of his base. Bush also has to keep the pressure on in the War on Terrorism while dealing with the threat of a nuclear North Korea and Iran.

Bush is in a rare situation for a second-term President. The Republicans control Congress, Bush has a larger mandate than he did in the first term, and he has the opportunity to push through his policy agenda in a way that he did not in his first term. At the same time, he has to work with a Democratic Party that is dead-set on obstructing his agenda, a media that has every interest in bringing him down regardless of the costs to their credibility, and a war against a shadowy and difficult enemy. Only time will tell if he has truly seized the opportunities given to him or if his second term will be as weak as some of his predecessors.