GOP ascends, Bush 'misunderestimated'

Several weeks ago, after George Bush's Sept. 12 speech before the United Nations, I wrote in these pages that though he is widely mocked, the president always seems to have the last laugh. Surely he let out a satisfied chuckle or two on Election night, when he became only the third president in 100 years to gain seats in both houses of Congress in the middle of his first term. Reportedly he lit a cigar as it became clear that Republicans had won control of the Senate.

Speaking of the United Nations, that venerable body's Security Council might well have given Mr. Bush cause for a snicker two Friday's ago when it unanimously approved the United States' resolution on Iraq. Even Syria cast its vote for the resolution, which found Iraq to be in material breach of at least 16 previous resolutions, demanded that Iraq allow weapons inspectors access to any square inch of its territory and gave Saddam seven days to acquiesce and 30 days thereafter to declare all weapons of mass destruction and dual use technologies in Iraq. So much for the Bush administration's much lamented "unilateralism." So much for its supposed diplomatic incompetence. After the events of last week, George Bush has left his doubters silenced and his foes trembling.

George Bush once famously remarked that his opponents had "misunderestimated" him in the 2000 election. Liberals across the nation repeated the quotation countless times with obvious glee, believing it verified the low estimation they held of his intelligence. So pleased were these Bush-haters at his mispronunciation that they missed the undeniable point he was trying to get across: Bush had indeed been underestimated in 2000, as he was by Democrats nation-wide in 2002.

Perfectly satisfied to repeat the president's many gaffes and verbal errors, and to occasionally hyperventilate over the Florida recount, Democrats deluded themselves into believing that they were matched up against a buffoon. Meanwhile George Bush set about enacting an ambitious conservative agenda, and began personally recruiting, as well as stumping and raising cash for, candidates in several crucial Senate races.

Today Bush has become the most powerful Republican president in generations. Ronald Reagan, popular as he may have been, always faced a Democratic House of Representatives, as well as a Democratic Senate after 1982 (even the Gipper lost seats in his first mid-term). Eisenhower was the last Republican president to command a majority in both houses. Coming as he did on the heels of the New Deal, however, Eisenhower governed in an overwhelmingly liberal age and achieved no substantial conservative reforms. To find a parallel to the current situation on Capitol Hill, one really has to go back to the days before Franklin Roosevelt.

Herein lies a crucial point. When Reagan rose to the White House, many Republicans hoped that he would be their own FDR, and would usher in an era of decades-long conservative dominance as Roosevelt had done for progressives. After Reagan's 49-state blowout victory over Walter Mondale in 1984, and particularly after the glorious collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and1991, Republicans could all but taste their coming dominance of federal politics. Yet somehow Democrats retained political power, even capturing the White House in 1992.

Clinton's presidency, however, was no liberal's golden age. It was indeed much like Eisenhower's hollow Republican majority in the 1950s. The ideological balance had shifted decisively to the right, forcing Democrats to moderate their views in order to win national elections.

Today a popular wartime Republican president has inherited that conservative intellectual climate and capitalized on it. Not only the Legislature and the Executive, but also the Judiciary is now dominated by conservative ideologues.

Democrats, I'm sure, will continue to persist in believing that George Bush is an utter moron. Even as his agenda becomes reality they will mock his intellectual capacities. The most popular refrain will be that it is not Bush but his advisors who are behind it all. I find this position laughable. All politicians have advisors, and all residents have cabinets. Nonetheless, very few presidents achieve Bush's level of power and popularity. Bush's drive, the undeniable force of his personality, is certainly a contributing factor to his success.

But moreover, the extent to which he surrounds himself with competent individuals is itself a testament to his intelligence. That Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell measure up so well against say, Les Aspin and Madeleine Albright, adds to, rather than detracts from, the tally of George Bush's awesome achievements.

There remains the danger that having gained so much traction, Republicans will overstep their mandate and quickly lose popularity. Newt Gingrich overplayed his hand in just this manner in 1994. The immediate signs are that Bush understands this risk. He struck a magnanimous tone on Wednesday morning, and plans to push for innocuous measures such as a Department of Homeland Security in the next few weeks. While on the campaign trail, Bush was reminded by an acquaintance of the propensity of Republican leaders to mess up just as things got going their way. "I won't mess this up," the president calmly replied, "because I know exactly what I'm doing." For their own sake, Bush's opponents both at home and abroad should stop doubting it.