Four more years

There are going to be a lot of issues to examine in the aftermath of the election relating to the vote itself.  How widespread were the Republicans' voter-suppression efforts, and how effective were they?  How well did the new Diebold voting machines perform?  And so on.  But Bush will be president for another four years.  And now the whole world has to think seriously about what that means.

Josh Marshall in a 11/03/04 post takes an early look at the policy implications of the Bush win:

Setting aside my general political leanings, my personal views and feelings of partisanship, I think the result portends very bad things for America's role in the world and the well-being on all levels of this country. Changes in domestic politics, in theory at least, can be shifted back at a following election. The world, though, is different. There we are just a ship -- though the largest one -- on waters we can never truly control. And I fear that this result will set in motion dangerous dynamics that even the relatively young among us will be wrestling with and contending with for the rest of our lives.

I've referred to this in the past, and hopefully will have a chance to return to it, but here's the essence of the matter, as I see it. Before today, the course that America had charted in the world over the last three years could be seen as the result of a traumatic event (9/11) and the choice of a president who was actually put in office by a minority of the electorate. This was a referendum on what's happened in the last three years. And it's been validated. ...

The country is bitterly divided. And as much as anyone President Bush has divided it. But president Bush got 51% and if there's anything I've learned from watching him for the last four years-plus, it is that his team will take this as a popular mandate for an aggressive push for their agenda -- notwithstanding the profound division in the country or what has happened over the previous four years. ...

President Bush and the Republicans now control the entire national government, even more surely now than they have over the last four years. They do so on the basis of garnering the votes of 51% or 52% of the population. But they will use that power as though there were no opposition at all. That needs to be countered.

The fact that a radicalized Republican Party is in solid control of all three branches of the national government is a serious consideration.  And the party itself is becoming increasingly authoritarian.  Bush is likely to have the chance to appoint four new Supreme Court Justices.  They will be in the mode of Antonin Scalia and Charles Pickering.

This piece by Sid Blumenthal is well worth reading.  Take the few seconds extra trouble to click through the "one-day pass" routine to get access to the entire article:  Bush unbound Salon.com 11/03/04.  Here's a sample:

While Kerry ran on the mainstream American traditions of international cooperation and domestic investment, and transparency and rationality as essential to democratic government, Bush campaigned directly against these very ideas. At his rallies, Bush was introduced as standing for "the right God." ...

The new majority is more theocratic than Republican, as Republican was previously understood; the defeat of the old moderate Republican Party is far more decisive than the loss by the Democrats. And there are no checks and balances. The terminal illness of Chief Justice William Rehnquist signals new appointments to the Supreme Court that will alter law for more than a generation. Conservative promises to dismantle constitutional law established since the New Deal will be acted upon. Roe vs. Wade will be overturned and abortion outlawed.

Now, without constraints, Bush can pursue the dreams he campaigned for -- the use of U.S. military might to bring God's gift of freedom to the world, with no more "global tests," and at home the enactment of the imperatives of "the right God." The international system of collective security forged in World War II and tempered in the Cold War is a thing of the past. The Democratic Party, despite its best efforts, has failed to rein in the radicalism sweeping the country. The world is in a state of emergency but also irrelevant. The New World, with all its power and might, stepping forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old? Goodbye to all that.

I don't think he's exaggerating about Roe v. Wade being overturned.  And the foreign policy shifts will be long-lasting.  I'll be amazed if NATO is anything but a shell by the end of Bush's second term.

The Bush policies abroad have been crashing hard into reality.  That will continue.  For better or worse, Bush will have to spend the next four years reaping at least part of what he's sown the last four.