"George W wins the popularity stakes" -- Australian newspaper article

[Matt Holcomb]

For the first time, George Bush has won the decisive endorsement of the American people, an explicit affirmation of America's most controversial war since Vietnam and a mandate to press ahead with his strident foreign policy.

Bush lost the popular vote at the 2000 election by half a million votes and suffered from questions about his legitimacy, but has now won it by some 3 million to 4 million votes. The result gives him more than 50 per cent of all votes cast, a feat Bill Clinton never achieved.

If Bush's dominance of the popular vote is validated by a victory in the Electoral College too, the Republicans will be in a commanding position, cementing control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress.

One of America's leading conservative intellectuals, Professor Francis Fukuyama, of Johns Hopkins University, said Bush's victory foreshadowed an increasingly tense relationship between the US and world opinion.

"This is very important internationally," he said. "People will say that it's not George Bush that is the problem, it's the American people that is the problem."

International antagonism to US foreign policy had, to now, centred on the Bush Administration as a radical aberration, while sentiment towards the American people had been more benign. But the return of the Administration would entrench world opinion against the US and its people.

US foreign policy will be tested almost immediately with the advent of an immensely difficult and dangerous new nuclear crisis in Iran.

The presidential election, the first since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was decided on the issue of terrorism, according to well-regarded pollster Carroll Doherty, editor of polling at the nonpartisan Pew Research Centre. "If Bush won, it would be because of 9/11," he said.

Like many experts, and officials in the Bush Administration itself, Fukuyama forecast that a second-term Bush presidency would pursue its existing foreign policy with new energy.

Bush's foreign policy is defined by three distinctive doctrines - pre-emption, unilateralism, and hegemony, all of which assert US power and interests above all else.

Or, as Yale history professor John Lewis Gaddis has put it: "In this new game there are no rules."

Fukuyama said: "I don't see much evidence that Bush is a reflective guy. I'm afraid there will not be much rethinking at all. Re-elected, he will say, 'They approve of what I'm doing - let's keep going.' "

In domestic affairs, Bush would have unchecked power to make vital long-term appointments, without risk of challenge in confirmation hearings before the Senate.

The Senate is controlled by the Republicans, who had 51 votes in the 100-seat chamber until yesterday but now appear set to enjoy an enlarged majority of 54 seats.

This would allow Bush to choose freely the next appointment to the Supreme Court, already dominated by conservatives but with an ailing Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, 80 years old and undergoing chemotherapy.

And it would allow Bush freely to choose the next chairman of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to replace Alan Greenspan when his final term expires in 2006.

But it is in foreign policy that the most urgent and dangerous challenges would emerge.

In three weeks, on November 25, the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency will meet to decide whether to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for failing to meet guidelines against nuclear proliferation.

An expert on Iran, the vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, George Perkovich, said: "Iran will absolutely be the first crisis after the election. It will be the biggest issue of the next year. And the first problem for the Bush Administration is that it does not have a policy on Iran.

"They have tried to get an Iran policy to produce a document but they haven't been able to because the Administration is split; it can't agree.

"The Vice-President, Dick Cheney, believes we just do not deal with governments we don't like, with governments that are evil. Others in the Administration say that we have to deal with them, because, like them or not, they are the government and we have no choice."

Bush has supported the work of three European powers - Germany, France and Britain - in negotiating a deal to stop Iran enriching uranium in quantities sufficient for making nuclear weapons.

But Iran has failed to meet the terms set out by the Europeans. According to Perkovich, the US needs to work with the Europeans and the Iranians to construct a solution. But the Cheney group in the Administration "can't bring themselves to do what's necessary to work with others".

They would be tempted to resort to armed force, "but even Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Defence Secretary and advocate of the Iraq invasion) has said that there are no good military options in Iran".

The slow-burning nuclear crisis in North Korea also will continue to unfold. The US estimates the North already has built two to six atomic weapons.

In economic policy, there is international unease with the twin US deficits in the US federal budget, and deficits in the current account.

Bush has promised to halve the federal deficit in the next term, but has no specific plan.

All of which echoes the words of Winston Churchill: "The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

[BlueSkyJaunte]

"George W wins the popularity stakes"

Does that make Kerry the awkward geek that nobody likes?

[CamB]

Bush's foreign policy is defined by three distinctive doctrines - pre-emption, unilateralism, and hegemony, all of which assert US power and interests above all else.

Thankfully, Iraq is such a freakin' mess that no (serious) military option elsewhere will be open for a while.

I've discovered a silver lining in Bush winning - there is no need to face defending Kerry's attempts to clean it up (which, lets face it, he was going to struggle to do materially differently than Bush has/will).

[Matt Holcomb]

Cam,

There is only one way to reverse the quagmire in Iraq and stop the senseless killing -- W I T H D R A W.

While Kerry said that he had a plan to win the peace, I think he was bluffing; he was telling the American people what they wanted to hear. I'm pretty sure he had a plan, I just don't think it involved the loss of another 1,000+ American lives.

I wish someone could posit a convincing argument as to why withdrawing American troops from Iraq would be worse than staying and inspiring Muslim maniacs to become "soldiers".

[techweenie]

Matt, I've seen the argument, but can't put my finger on the original source for the moment.

It's basically this: 'allowing the Iraqi people to feel they had pushed the occupying forces out would build a nationalistic pride, making their 'freedom' a "win" instead of something put in place by an invading army.

IOW, you don't appreciate and value what you don't fight for.'

However, this will never happen, because most people "personify" nations and revert to elementary schoolyard analogies when talking about international relations.