George W. Bush delivered his inaugural speech as the United States President who collected 537,000 fewer votes than his opponent. Without the intervention of a partisan, right-wing Supreme Court to ensure the election of a Republican, Mr Bush would now be a forgotten loser. The Observer considers his election an affront to the democratic principle with incalculable consequences for America and the world.
Mr Bush's inaugural attempt to assert his brand of one-nation, compassionate conservatism is bluster and hogwash. He has acted from the moment Al Gore conceded as if he had won a wholehearted mandate.
But the Bush cabinet is neither centrist nor compassionate. In home affairs, it is brutalist and reactionary - for tax cuts overtly biased towards the rich, against the protection of consumers, workers and the environment. In overseas affairs, Mr Bush has appointed Cold War warriors from his father's era who do not appreciate the nuances of a transformed international environment.
The departing President Clinton was in office during a record-breaking economic boom. However, a more accurate assessment of his legacy is that he has bestowed on the US the first Republican President and Republican-controlled Congress since 1952. For a President who supposedly made the Democrats respectable again, this is a bequest the world could have done without.
For all his cleverness and tactical political skills, Mr Clinton could not even deliver the limited Third Way philosophy developed in the late 1980s. He simply bought, as he acknowledged, essentially conservative policies with one or two small-scale, liberal micro-interventions.
As a result, the Republicans retained control of the political, intellectual and cultural agenda and plotted their return to power. Their success is embodied in the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney-general. Mr Ashcroft is a southern-based, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-gay religious fundamentalist peddling a reactionary brand of free market economics and American unilateralism. He epitomises the new centre of gravity in American politics.
Britain and Europe will find doing business with this administration tense, oppositional and unproductive. It would be difficult enough had Mr Bush won a mandate. Without it, we are in for a very rough ride indeed.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
###
