Sure the new year is only a few hours old. But for those bold (OK, reckless) enough to speculate, it's never too early for fearless predictions.
Well, maybe not that fearless: The political environment is too unsettled to safely predict which party will prosper in this second Bush era. But it's easier to guess the questions we'll be asking in the months ahead. Among them:
Can he walk the wire? It may be a good thing that President-elect George W. Bush isn't a political history buff, because history doesn't give him much cause for holiday cheer.
Bush is the fourth president to win the White House while losing the popular vote. None of the other three won a second term. Two (John Quincy Adams in 1828 and Benjamin Harrison in 1892) were beaten by the man they defeated four years earlier; the third, Rutherford B. Hayes, didn't even seek reelection.
Bush, though, proved in the campaign that he's probably a better politician than any of those predecessors. It's true that Bush made only limited inroads among the suburban swing voters outside the South who were the principal target for his "compassionate conservative" message. But in an economy this strong, it was a testament to Bush's skills that he came as close as he did to Al Gore in the popular vote and squeezed out his narrow majority in the electoral college.
Now, though, Bush has to resolve the contradictions inherent in his victory. He had hoped to win by expanding his party's appeal. Instead, he won by consolidating and mobilizing the Republican base--especially white men, gun owners and religious conservatives. In hundreds, perhaps thousands of governing decisions, Bush will face the same choice: whether to tilt toward the voters who elected him, or the voters he needs to broaden his coalition.
Campaigns never preview the full weight of that tension because it's easy for candidates to throw a rhetorical bone to each side. The choices are much more difficult to smooth over in office.
Bill Clinton learned that when he saw his pledge to allow gays to serve openly in the military nearly erase, in one stroke, his initial success at positioning himself as a cultural centrist. Bush, for starters, could face similar headaches as his desire to court African Americans and suburban women collides with the right's expectation that, especially with conservative John Ashcroft at the Justice Department, Bush will roll back affirmative action and make abortion illegal.
