Bush Presidency Will Backfire on GOP

by Steve Chapman

Requesting wealth and power, he becomes a besieged Colombian drug lord. Turned into the world's most sensitive man, he finds that the woman of his dreams has something different in mind: "I want a life with a man who will ignore me and take me for granted and only pretend to be interested in me to get in my pants."

Bush may get exactly what he hoped for when he started this campaign -- carrying the crucial state of Florida, winning the presidential election and maintaining Republican control of Congress. But when he made those wishes, he should have been a bit more specific. Never has victory looked so much like a pie in the face.

Instead of having his success recognized on Election Night, Bush will have to wait days, weeks or even months to be certified as the 43rd president of the United States. If he ultimately prevails, which is not guaranteed, he will be the first candidate since 1888 to gain the White House despite getting fewer votes than his opponent -- and the first to be greeted, before even taking office, with street protests egged on by Jesse Jackson. Any edge Bush can achieve in the Electoral College will be not only narrow but vigorously disputed.

As a consequence, his presidency will be tainted by the widespread belief that it is fundamentally illegitimate, owing to an outrageous snafu in West Palm Beach, Florida -- a state that, as conspiratorialists note darkly, just happens to be governed by his own brother.

Even if Al Gore were to graciously give up the fight tomorrow, it wouldn't be much help to Bush. There is no getting around the fact that, if Bush is inaugurated, a substantial minority of Americans will spend the next four years feeling that they were cheated out of their democratic rights by inept election officials, unfair laws and crafty Republican attorneys.

What Bush claims as a vindication of constitutional principles will be depicted by his enemies as a ruthless usurpation of the electoral process -- a pinstriped coup d'etat. Instead of a honeymoon, Bush's first few months may resemble a bad day in divorce court. Imagine if the Monica Lewinsky scandal had broken at the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency, and you get a glimpse of what Bush may have to endure.

His administration would have plenty of obstacles even if the election outcome had been clear and definitive. His party, which lost seats in Congress, will have only a tiny majority in the House of Representatives -- and maybe only a 50-50 split in the Senate, giving Vice President Dick Cheney the tie-breaking vote.

Bush has no mandate for anything he proposed during the campaign. And thanks to their numbers, Democrats will be well-positioned to block anything he wants to do.

His central proposal, an across-the-board tax cut, has dim prospects. On a variety of issues -- a prescription drug benefit for seniors, a patients' bill of rights, education spending, and more -- Bush will find the agenda being set, and the important leverage being exercised, by the opposition.

He promised to bring to Washington the sort of bipartisan cooperation he pioneered in Austin. But the Texas legislature doesn't have a lot of members like Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Conyers. Most Democrats in Congress will be interested in cooperating only if Bush is prepared to give them most of what they want and give up most of what he wants. For the next two years, he may find it devilishly hard to translate GOP majorities into GOP programs.

After that, things will probably get worse. The president's party normally loses seats in off-year congressional elections under the best of circumstances. These will not be the best of circumstances. There will be 20 Republican Senate seats up in 2002, seven more than the Democrats will have to defend. Among them are those held by Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond (combined age: 176), who may have overstayed their welcome.

If the Democrats regain power in both houses, Bush can expect them to arrive in an assertive mood, pushing for measures they've had to keep on the shelf since the rise of Newt Gingrich. Clinton, whose party lost Congress in 1994, can tell him how much fun that will be.

For the moment, Bush is in a painful limbo, seemingly elected to the White House but barred from the prerogatives normally accorded the president-elect. Before long, though, he may think of these as the good old days.