NEW YORK - Emboldened by his decisive win in Tuesday's United States elections, President George W Bush Thursday reaffirmed to push ahead with the ambitious conservative agenda to remake America and the world in their image. But there is considerable dispute that there is such a "mandate".

Claude Robinson

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Bush declared during a 40-minute news conference a day after he declared victory over Senator John Kerry.

Among other things, Bush said he's going to "spend" the capital to overhaul America's social security system, one of the biggest goals in his second-term agenda, and rewrite the tax code. And on the international side he will step up the fight against Islamic terrorism and promote 'freedom' in the Middle East and elsewhere.

As part of the revolution, conservatives will also expect appointment of conservative judges. Given reports of the state of health of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, this could be a major early test of the resolve to implement the agenda.

But while the 2004 election has not been disputed like the 2000 debacle over Florida, many liberal commentators are taking issue with the assertions by the right-wing that the 51 per cent vote for the president constituted a 'mandate' for radical change.

WASHINGTON, USA - President Bush arrives at his press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House in Washington last Thursday. (Photo: AP)

The argument for a radical conservative agenda stems largely from the fact that exit polls reveal that most people who voted for the president were driven by what the Press have been calling moral or cultural values on issues like religion, guns, abortion and gay marriage.

These issues proved to be more important for many voters than terrorism, the Iraq war or the economy - even where voters have lost jobs in the Bush recession.

Thomas Frank, author of the recent book, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, offers an excellent explanation of the rise of the conservative revolt in American politics over the past 30 years.

He summarised some of the key issues in a commentary in the New York Times Friday. I believe his views are instructive in understanding the steps Bush has been taking and how liberals and progressive forces are likely to respond.

"Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up.

It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes."

Hence poor people will vote for tax cuts that are skewed in favour of the rich. They are rightly worried about some of the permissiveness in popular music and movies but do not question the corporations and executives that profit from such 'values'.

Frank, like many other liberals, believes it has been a mistake for the Democratic Party to appear more conservative. They should address the class issues that are hidden in the so-called culture wars.

"To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents, Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimising them; emphasise the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy."

He acknowledges that the Democratic Party must make it clear "that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith".

"This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers."

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman believes a major goal of the Bush agenda and the conservative coalition he leads is "to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating social security and, eventually, Medicare", (New York Times 5/11/04).
Accordingly, what's at stake isn't just the fate of the Democratic Party that suffered defeats also in the Congress. It is "the fate of America as we know it".

Are these just exaggerations of sore losers? I don't think so. In any case, listening to Americans of both the right and the left on various radio shows for the past few days my impression is that the right thinks it has won a revolution and the left disagrees with equal passion and conviction.

As the president pushes ahead with his agenda, a lot of attention will focus on how mainstream media respond.
Starting with the 36-day recount of the Florida vote four years ago, through the Iraq war and beyond, Bush has been at what the Washington Post media critic called "the centre of the political and media universe".

"He's had a testy relationship with the establishment Press: the fewest news conferences of any president in more than four decades, an administration that thrives on secrecy and a vice-president who has denounced the New York Times and barred its reporters from Air Force Two."

Some in mainstream media still smart from the fact that they were misled by the Bush Administration claims of weapons of mass destruction as the reason for going to war, and so their coverage has gotten tougher over the past year.

Will attitudes harden on both sides as the conservatives seek to remake the world and as the Press seek to reassert that healthy scepticism of officialdom that is so essential to keeping public officials and institutions honest?

The liberal media watch group, Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR), has done an analysis of mainstream media reporting of administration claims of a 'mandate' and concluded that assertions that Tuesday's vote was a 'mandate' have "taken hold" in mainstream media, including the Boston Globe, which reported that Bush's victory grants him a "clear mandate to advance the conservative agenda for the next four years".

FAIR argued that this interpretation of the election was a sign that the White House spin was "triumphing over the actual numbers recorded on election day". The president received a record number, but so did the losing side.

As Americans ponder whether the mandate is to remake the country, the rest of the world has to ponder its own relationships with the United States, especially as people around the world had indicated in pre-election polls that they wanted to see the back of Bush.

Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq, which was overshadowed by the election, is back in the news. Word leaked out on Friday that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had written to Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warning against a major assault on Fallujah as that would make it harder to hold elections next January.

With US troops massing around Fallujah, I will not take bets that the assault will long be delayed. It is going to happen.
Krugman believes that Bush's second term will be dogged by the same issues as the first. He listed the resurgence of al-Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs. These "weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality". The more things change.

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS