Bush to dismantle Social Security, claims unwarranted mandate

NOTE: Contrary to the assertions by the reporter of this article, who should have checked his facts first, the election, assuming that all votes were/are actually counted as cast, was not, as this reporter states, a "decisive win." In point of fact, Bush won by the smallest margin since 1918. Bush also has the distinction of having more votes cast against him than any President in US history. So when Bush declares that he "earned capital in the campaign, political capital," he is talking out of the side of his mouth.

The New York Times
November 5, 2004
Confident Bush Outlines Ambitious Plan for 2nd Term
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - A confident President Bush vowed on Thursday to move quickly and vigorously to enact the ambitious agenda he set out during the campaign, saying, "The people made it clear what they wanted."

In a 40-minute news conference a day after he declared victory over Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush said he would begin work immediately on his proposal to overhaul Social Security, one of the biggest goals in his second-term agenda. He called for Congress to move speedily to limit lawsuit awards against doctors, said he would push for tougher educational standards for high schools and signaled that he had settled on broad principles for rewriting the tax code.

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it," Mr. Bush said, asserting the power he held after a decisive win and reclaiming the national stage as his own after sharing it for months with Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he wanted to reach out across party lines after a campaign that emphasized ideological divisions and produced raw feelings on both sides. But he left unclear how much, if at all, he would compromise especially after an election that gave him a majority of the popular vote, strengthened conservative Republicans in Congress and left Democrats weaker.

"My goal is to work on the ideal and to reach out and to continue to work and find common ground on issues," he said at one point. But at another, he suggested that his idea of common ground would be very close to the platform he ran on.

After a long campaign, he said, "there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress."

When the questioning turned to perhaps the most ideologically charged issues facing Mr. Bush in a new term - the likelihood of his making one or more nominations to the Supreme Court - Mr. Bush gave no indication of how he would balance pressure from the evangelical Christians who played an important role in winning his re-election and his stated desire to reduce the nation's partisan tensions. He said only that no vacancy now existed and that when one did he would choose "somebody who knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law."

Asked whether the support he received from conservative evangelical Christians raised concerns about the nation's becoming split politically between people for whom religion is very important and those for whom it is less so, Mr. Bush said, "I will be your president regardless of your faith, and I don't expect you to agree with me necessarily on religion."

The president was jocular and assertive during the session with reporters, held in an auditorium on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building before he left for a long weekend at Camp David to recover from the last grueling leg of the campaign.

He said he would think about changes to his cabinet and the White House staff, noting that departures are inevitable but adding that he had made no decisions.

With rumors already swirling about who will stay and who will go, his aides said that he intended to move quickly on personnel issues to minimize the speculation and assure that he had his new team in place for a fast start to his second term. The aides said he had not asked for any resignations, but had told cabinet members on Thursday morning that if they planned to leave, they should tell Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff.

In the news conference, Mr. Bush also addressed foreign policy and his plans for Iraq. Asked about the planned offensive by United States and Iraqi forces against the insurgents who effectively control Falluja and several other cities, Mr. Bush replied, "In order for Iraq to be a free country, those who are trying to stop the elections and stop a free society from emerging must be defeated."

He provided no timetable for an offensive, though the intensive preparations on the ground suggest that it could be imminent. He said that he expected 125,000 Iraqis to be trained as security forces by the time of the first round of Iraqi elections in January, but that he had not had any requests from military commanders to place more American troops on the ground to help assure that the elections come off.

Last month, the Pentagon ordered about 6,500 soldiers in Iraq to extend their tours, strengthening the American military presence there in preparation for the elections.

Mr. Bush restated a central campaign theme, that spreading freedom and democracy was the best long-term solution to fighting terrorism and its causes. He said he still had faith in his plan to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and when told erroneously by a reporter that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, had died, he said, "God bless his soul."

Mr. Bush called on the outgoing Congress to break the impasse between the House and the Senate on legislation that would create a national intelligence director, one of the main recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. He also made clear that he would put a full set of substantively and politically complex domestic policy proposals before the new Congress when it convenes in January, starting with Social Security but also including education, limits on lawsuits and rethinking the tax code.

"I readily concede I've laid out some very difficult issues for people to deal with," Mr. Bush said.

Aides said Mr. Bush planned to begin talking to members of Congress about Social Security in coming weeks, and to begin a big push to sell the public on his approach in his inaugural address, his State of the Union Message and his budget, all early next year.

As he did in 2000, Mr. Bush campaigned this year on his proposal to add voluntary personal investment accounts to Social Security, letting workers divert part of their payroll taxes into stocks and bonds for their retirement. But he has never answered the big questions that would accompany any effort to remake the system, starting with how, in an era of large budget deficits, he would continue to pay for full benefits for current retirees if payroll taxes from current workers are partially diverted to private accounts.

Personal accounts could provide greater returns than those earned by the system currently. But they are unlikely, by themselves, to address Social Security's long-term financial problems, which will become acute over the next several decades as the baby boom generation begins reaching retirement age and life expectancies continue to rise.

Mr. Bush has never said what steps he might support, along with the creation of personal accounts, to pay for the new system and fill the long-term financial hole projected by Social Security's trustees. Beyond higher returns through investment, the menu of options is not appealing to either political party: benefit cuts to reduce expenses or tax increases to increase the amount of revenue flowing into the system.

Mr. Bush acknowledged the political difficulties in the news conference, but said that doing nothing would be an even worse option. He said he would start by referring both parties in Congress to the report done for him three years ago by a commission whose co-chairman, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, was a Democrat. Mr. Moynihan, the four-term senator who died last year, was one of only a few Democrats in Congress to support the idea of personal accounts.

"I'm not sure we can get it done without Democrat participation, because it is a big issue, and I will explain to them and I will show them Senator Moynihan's thinking as a way to begin the process," he said.

Mr. Bush has also been vague about how he wants to approach changing the tax code. Aides said he would appoint a bipartisan commission by the end of the year to explore all the ideas on the table, including a single-rate flat tax and a national sales tax. The commission, which Mr. Bush first proposed at the Republican convention in September, is to report to Treasury Secretary John W. Snow as early as possible in 2005.

Mr. Bush said at the news conference that he wanted any changes in the tax code to be "revenue neutral," meaning that he did not envision it as a tax cut by another name. He also signaled he would be open to keeping some of the most popular deductions and tax breaks, like the deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, in any new system.

When he was pushing for a new tax bill as governor of Texas, he said, "I always noted how important it was for certain incentives to be built into the tax code, and that will be an interesting part of the debate."

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IRAQ NEWS

abcnews.com

IRAQ NEWS

Soldiers Describe Looting of Explosives
Iraqis piled high-grade material from a key site into trucks in the weeks after Baghdad fell, four U.S. reservists and guardsmen say. (LA Times)

MSF aid agency stops work in Iraq
The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says it is pulling out of Iraq because of the danger to its staff. (BBC)

Key Saddam trial evidence 'lost'
Human Rights Watch says it is likely crucial evidence for the trials of Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi officials has been lost or tainted. (BBC)

Three Iraqi guards 'beheaded'
Three Iraqi guardsmen have been beheaded by militants, according to al-Jazeera television.(BBC)

Clue to Attack in Iraq Started With Eyes
A military convoy hobbled by mishaps was the target of a suicide car bomber last week. Eight Marines died, nine were hurt. (LA Times)

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A Good Dirty Fight

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

A Good Dirty Fight
By PAUL BEGALA

As we sift through the results of Campaign 2004, let us pause to praise negative campaigning. Bemoaning attack politics is, of course, de rigueur for All the Right People. When President Bush began his fusillade against John Kerry in May, Prof. Darrell West of Brown University predicted "the most negative campaign ever," and many analysts agreed.

President Bush hammered Senator Kerry as unprincipled, uncertain, unsteady. "He looks French," sniffed Commerce Secretary Don Evans.

Persuaded by focus groups that swing voters don't like negatives, the Kerry campaign initially turned the other cheek. During the Democratic National Convention, Kerry strategists scrubbed every speech, excising attacks on President Bush. They even complained that former President Jimmy Carter was too anti-Bush; when you think a Nobel Peace Prize winner is too mean, you're really running a positive campaign. The Kerry camp found itself trailing by double digits after the Republican National Convention in September.

Then, spurred by a conversation with former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Kerry went on the offensive. He accused the president of dishonesty and incompetence in the prosecution of the Iraq war. Tough stuff, that, and the race was soon a dead heat.

And so it went - Republicans ran ads with wolves; Democrats countered with an ostrich. There was a brief moment last week when both men pledged not to politicize the Osama bin Laden tape. Then they both did exactly the opposite - with Mr. Bush asserting the tape was a reminder that America could ill afford Kerryesque vacillation in the face of evil, and Mr. Kerry countering that the only reason Mr. bin Laden was making videotapes was that Mr. Bush had "outsourced" his capture to Afghan warlords.

After such a brutal campaign, one would expect voters to be turned off. Indeed, the political scientists Shanto Iyengar and Stephen Ansolabehere have written that negative campaigning "may diminish the power of civic duty and may undermine the legitimacy of the entire electoral process."

But to the surprise of the handwringers, the viciousness of the campaign inspired voters to stand in line for hours in a rare display of the power of civic duty. And Mr. Bush's relentlessly negative campaign earned him the ultimate legitimacy - a solid majority of the vote in a high-turnout election.

To be sure, all negative campaigning is not created equal. Criticisms of ideas and issues are more successful than personal attacks on character. Case in point: when Republican Congressional candidates attacked Democrats relentlessly on issues - in their Contract With America campaign of 1994 - they won handily. But after the relentless assault on President Clinton's character over the next two years, he became the first president in more than a century to gain Congressional seats in the sixth year of his presidency.

Americans are tough, and we expect our politicians to be tough. Say what you will about President Bush and Senator Kerry, but you must admit they're tough guys who ran tough campaigns. And the voters rewarded their negativity by turning out in droves.

Paul Begala, co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" and a former aide to President Bill Clinton, is a professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University.

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The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out
By GARRY WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).

The results bring to mind a visit the Dalai Lama made to Chicago not long ago. I was one of the people deputized to ask him questions on the stage at the Field Museum. He met with the interrogators beforehand and asked us to give him challenging questions, since he is too often greeted with deference or flattery.

The only one I could think of was: "If you could return to your country, what would you do to change it?" He said that he would disestablish his religion, since "America is the proper model." I later asked him if a pluralist society were possible without the Enlightenment. "Ah," he said. "That's the problem." He seemed to envy America its Enlightenment heritage.

Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.

President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect.

In his victory speech yesterday, President Bush indicated that he would "reach out to the whole nation," including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers.

The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.

Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion."

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The Red Zone

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

The Red Zone
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in little blue puddles, John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in Boston about his concession call to President Bush.

"We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."

Democrat: Heal thyself.

W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.

The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.

W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."

The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way. If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?

While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about reaching out, Republicans said they had "the green light" to pursue their conservative agenda, like drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the tax code.

"He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one Bush insider predicts. "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that the more insurgents American troops kill, the more they create.

Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock still vice president?) Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech: "This has been a consequential presidency which has revitalized our economy and reasserted a confident American role in the world." Well, it has revitalized the Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And "confident" is not the first word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a country that has alienated everyone except Fiji.

Vice continued, "Now we move forward to serve and to guard the country we love." Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to guard" sound like "to rape and to pillage."

He's creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One party controls all power in the country. One network serves as state TV. One nation dominates the world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts in Iraq.

Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.

Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.

Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."

John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage.

Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately started talking about values and religion. Their sudden passion for wooing Southern white Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008 campaign (nothing but a wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue puddle is comforting itself with the expectation that this loony bunch will fatally overreach, just as Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.

But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching.

Invading France?

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Two Nations Under God

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

Two Nations Under God
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Well, as Grandma used to say, at least I still have my health. ...

I often begin writing columns by interviewing myself. I did that yesterday, asking myself this: Why didn't I feel totally depressed after George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, or even when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore? Why did I wake up feeling deeply troubled yesterday?

Answer: whatever differences I felt with the elder Bush were over what was the right policy. There was much he ultimately did that I ended up admiring. And when George W. Bush was elected four years ago on a platform of compassionate conservatism, after running from the middle, I assumed the same would be true with him. (Wrong.) But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?

At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level, without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake, and partly because Mr. Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out.

The election results reaffirmed that. Despite an utterly incompetent war performance in Iraq and a stagnant economy, Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago - as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.

This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, "Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?" the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way.

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends.

"The Democrats have ceded to Republicans a monopoly on the moral and spiritual sources of American politics," noted the Harvard University political theorist Michael J. Sandel. "They will not recover as a party until they again have candidates who can speak to those moral and spiritual yearnings - but turn them to progressive purposes in domestic policy and foreign affairs."

I've always had a simple motto when it comes to politics: Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails. This column will absolutely not be rooting for George Bush to fail so Democrats can make a comeback. If the Democrats make a comeback, it must not be by default, because the country has lapsed into a total mess, but because they have nominated a candidate who can win with a positive message that connects with America's heartland.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of talk that Mr. Bush has a mandate for his far right policies. Yes, he does have a mandate, but he also has a date - a date with history. If Mr. Bush can salvage the war in Iraq, forge a solution for dealing with our entitlements crisis - which can be done only with a bipartisan approach and a more sane fiscal policy - upgrade America's competitiveness, prevent Iran from going nuclear and produce a solution for our energy crunch, history will say that he used his mandate to lead to great effect. If he pushes for still more tax cuts and fails to solve our real problems, his date with history will be a very unpleasant one - no matter what mandate he has.

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Lessons of the Ballot Box

This is a start, but much is missing about the high spoilage of votes in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, and the many problems at polling places throughout the country that have been underreported.

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

Lessons of the Ballot Box

When the last of the Ohio returns came in, the 2004 election ended up being outside the so-called margin of litigation. But an uncontested election is not necessarily a well-run one. In Ohio, and around the country, this year's election exhibited flaws that will continue to detract from our democracy until they are addressed. One of the first issues that both parties should commit to is working to produce a first-class elections system.

There were significant problems with the Ohio voting, even though the Kerry campaign determined that a recount would not change the outcome. Incredibly, four years after the 2000 election mess, more than 70 percent of Ohioans still cast their vote on punch-card machines, whose hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads routinely disenfranchise as many as 2 percent, or more, of the voters who use them. Many of the more than 130,000 Ohioans who were forced to vote on provisional ballots were registered voters who should have been on the rolls. The system did not melt down, but there were plenty of problems that showed its vulnerability.

Partisan poll workers challenged voters in Ohio and Florida, relying on laws that in future elections could be used to disenfranchise large numbers of voters and to slow voting in some precincts to a crawl. Voter identification requirements were arbitrarily, and often incorrectly, enforced. Minority voters in some states were the targets of dirty tricks, including leaflets telling newly registered voters that they could not vote in this year's election.

One of the most troubling problems with the voting was the extraordinary lines many voters faced at the polls. In some areas, the wait to vote was four hours or more, and in many cases the longest lines were in minority neighborhoods. Many people literally cannot afford to wait that long to vote, and there were numerous reports of voters leaving the lines without voting. The nation should commit itself to providing enough voting machines and election workers to make waiting times reasonable.

The controversy over provisional ballots, one of the few reforms to come out of the 2000 election, showed that the rules governing them need improvement. Many states quietly adopted laws requiring these provisional ballots to be thrown out if they are cast in the wrong precinct. But election officials are often unable to direct voters to the right precinct on Election Day. A valid ballot should count wherever it is filed. There were also too many reports of absentee ballots duly applied for, including by military personnel, that did not arrive in time.

Nearly one-third of voters nationwide cast their ballots on electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper trail. As the public has learned more about the vulnerability of electronic voting to errors and intentional tampering, there has been a fast-growing movement to require voter-verified paper trails. Until these are provided, many voters will not have confidence in these machines.

The good news about the election system this week is that more than 114 million Americans, including many young people and new voters, believed in it enough to vote. There is great work to be done, however, to give them the system they deserve.

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The Next President Bush

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

The Next President Bush

President George W. Bush has put to rest all the ghosts of his father's one-term administration. He won a solid re-election victory on Tuesday night. The country remains, of course, divided. It is the point of a national election to illuminate divisions - these days in stark blue and red. The 49 percent of the voting public who wanted a different outcome are disappointed, and in some cases crushed and frightened about the future of the country. Their first job is to accept the will of the majority. Then it will be time for everyone - Mr. Bush, the victorious Republicans and the people who opposed them - to decide what to do next.

Mr. Bush can either try for four years of the same, or look to his place in history. Yesterday, he offered at least some hope that he was choosing the higher road. "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation," he told the Kerry voters. Experience suggests that these conversions are short-lived. Four years ago, according to Vice President Dick Cheney, when Mr. Bush lost the popular vote and seemed to be in a position where consensus-seeking was a given, White House officials thought about taking a compromise centrist route for "about 30 seconds" before grabbing their old partisan agenda and running with it. In his speech yesterday, Mr. Cheney stressed the president's mandate. Given the way Mr. Cheney behaved during the first term, it's unnerving to imagine what he may have in mind now.

Obviously, the losers in this election are going to be far more eager to see Mr. Bush take a different, more moderate route this time than the winners - especially the triumphalist Congressional Republican leaders. But there's a yearning out there, in red states as well as blue, for a government that works better and with less partisanship. Many of the voters who support Mr. Bush are just as unhappy about economic uncertainties, lost jobs and the number of people who have no health insurance as the people who voted for Mr. Kerry. Vast majorities of Americans want to keep the federal deficit under control, make Social Security financially sound, protect benefits like Medicare and Medicaid, and be sure that there's adequate spending on homeland security.

Mr. Bush can address that national yearning - and leave a magnificent legacy to the country - but such an effort will require bipartisan action. Except for his education initiative, the president's domestic agenda thus far has been the product of the Republicans alone, and it has been a mess that has made nobody very happy. Tax cuts are easy to pass, even irresponsible ones. But spending cuts are not, and the president's own party refused to make them happen. Instead, Republican leaders bought the passage of the bills they needed by piling on masses of unnecessary, irresponsible pork. A truly heavy political lift, like fixing Medicare or restraining the deficit, requires national attention and the kind of political support that can come only if both parties feel they have something to gain from success.

For Mr. Bush's opponents, one of the great disappointments of this election was the fact that the war in Iraq had little impact on the outcome. The nation is worried about whether the Iraq conflict is going well, but many of the people who wonder whether the president made the wrong choices on that had other interests when they went to the polls: a preference for the president's personality, memories of 9/11 and concern over social issues like gay marriage. While Iraq did not in the end hurt the president's re-election campaign, it has not gone away. Although members of his team campaigned as if Iraq was going very well indeed, they know better. Finding a way out of the morass in Iraq must be the work of all Americans, and on this issue, the president has a real obligation to reach out to the other party. While Democrats may be quietly hoping that Mr. Bush runs into so many problems in the new term that the country will turn back to them in the next election, no partisans are so eager for political gain that they want to see Iraq plunged into an inferno of civil war and terrorism.

Tuesday's vote came as a particular shock in places like Europe, where much of the population simply couldn't conceive that people would want to keep Mr. Bush in power. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair made two important points to America's angry allies when he spoke about the results. One was that this is the right time for Mr. Bush to reach out to America's traditional allies - and time for the rest of the world to accept that he will be around for the next four years and must be dealt with as the American people's choice. The other is that the critical goal of stability in the Arab world will never be achieved unless the United States throws itself back into the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Blair is one Bush supporter who deserves all the election rewards he can get, and this is the one he's desperate for.

For many anti-Bush voters, the wounds of this rancorous campaign will be raw for a long time, and the idea of joining hands with the president will be a nonstarter. And 49 percent of the public expects those in the loyal opposition to continue taking principled stands against the administration. The challenge for them will be to pick their fights wisely.

To us, the central domestic issue of the next term will be the Supreme Court, and Mr. Bush's nomination to replace the seriously ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The president could pick a respected jurist of centrist temperament with a genuine belief in judicial restraint, or he could pick someone in the ultra-extreme school of Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Bush's social conservative base will be pressing in one direction, and will no doubt remind him that the election turned heavily on social issues, particularly opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

The evidence in the polling data that these social issues were crucial to Mr. Bush's win - and that the bulk of those infrequent voters who stood in line for hours to vote were evangelicals, not people against the war - is pretty inescapable. But we were struck by the broad majority of voters who told pollsters that they favored a middle approach on these issues: providing gay couples with the right to have some kind of civil unions, and guaranteeing women the right to legal abortions in most, if not all, cases. This page will never give up our commitment to women's right to reproductive choice, as well as full civil rights for people of all sexual orientations. But a leader who was prepared to make political sacrifices in order to stake a claim to that middle ground could be laying the foundation for a new national consensus that might finally bring the nation's social wars to an end.

Mr. Bush could be that leader. He could be the uniter he promised to be, then failed to become, four years ago. He could put an end to a period in national history when too many people go to the polls on Election Day convinced that victory for the other side would mean disaster for the nation. A lot of voters felt that way on Tuesday, and now Mr. Bush has the chance to show them they were wrong.

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Stunned Democrats Look to the Internal Debate Ahead

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

Stunned Democrats Look to the Internal Debate Ahead
By JAMES BENNET

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 - Democrats began turning Wednesday to the fight that some in the party fear they wage most consistently: with one another.

Democratic politicians and operatives said the defeat of Senator John Kerry and the loss of seats in the House and the Senate were likely to fan internal debate over everything from overarching ideology to on-the-ground tactics to the qualities to look for in a candidate.

The recriminations began even before Mr. Kerry's concession, with leaks to the news media about which Democrats had given what valuable but unheeded advice to him. While condemning any acrimony, several Democratic leaders said the party would benefit from a substantive internal debate.

"You always take stock after a loss like this, and it was a big disappointment," said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the longtime House Democratic leader who ran against Mr. Kerry for the presidential nomination, only to see his labor ties fail to bring him the Iowa victory he had hoped would propel his candidacy.

Mr. Gephardt argued that the Democrats' failure appeared to be more of tactics than of programs - that Mr. Kerry's proposals were popular but that the Democrats' organization, while impressive, paled beside the Republicans' machine for turning out votes.

"They used the infrastructure of gun organizations and religious organizations to get that done,'' he said, "and we've got to grapple with that.''

But Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who also sought the presidency but who dropped out before a single primary, said the party had to address some basic positions as well.

"We ought to debate what our strategy should be in the war on terrorism,'' Mr. Graham said.

"We also ought to have a debate,'' he said, "on how we can move the debate on values beyond God, guns and gays to tolerance, concern for others, love."

The Democratic Party appeared Wednesday to be trying to find God, or at least to find a way to talk about him. Several Democrats said their candidates needed to reach evangelical Christian voters, who on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported President Bush.

"Our failure - or our 'drawback' is a better word - is, sometimes, to speak to our faith, and to relate to people that we share their faith," Mr. Gephardt said.

One senior Democratic official suggested that the problem was deeper than communicating.

"I do believe there is a cultural shift going on in this country," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the intraparty debate. "I think the country is becoming more conservative. I think their base is growing.''

Douglas Sosnik, who was a counselor to President Bill Clinton and who advised Mr. Kerry, said that contrary to the aftermath of the muddled 2000 election results, the Democrats now needed to accept that they had become - "no ifs, ands or buts" - the opposition party.

"As we go prospectively forward - to the question of 'now what?' - to me it's all going to be stuffed through the prism of what does it mean to be an opposition party," Mr. Sosnik said. "And to me, being more effective as an opposition party means being grounded outside the Beltway, through the governors."

"We've got to build the party back up from the ground up,'' he said. "That's going to require some bloodletting, and a rethinking on substance and style."

Some argued that the party needed to embrace policies that would appeal to voters in Southern states and across the country.

"We need to put ideas first," said Al From, founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which was close to Mr. Clinton. "Over the last 40 years we've seen the turf that we compete on shrink. We've got to be a national party."

Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster from the same centrist faction of the party, said, "The Democratic Party, in terms of security and values, has to be more competitive with the Republicans, and in that sense the party is going to look for ways to rebrand itself."

But Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois said the problem was the Democrats' communication rather than their traditional platform.

"I don't think we need to trim on the social and economic justice principles of the Democratic Party at all," Ms. Schakowsky said.

"We can do a better job of connecting that with people's lives, not just their economic lives but their spiritual lives as well," she said. "It doesn't have to be in religious terms so much as value-laden terms."

She said, for example, that she expected that Mr. Bush would now try to "privatize" Social Security, and that the Democrats should respond by emphasizing that they wanted to preserve a "safety net" because "we care for you."

Democratic officials seemed stunned by Tuesday's vote. They said they had thought that for once they had the unity, the money, the organization and a weak enough Republican opponent to win the presidency and at least hold their own in the House and the Senate.

"With 120 million people voting, at some point it's got to settle in with us that there are just more of them than there are of us," one Democratic operative said of the Republicans, adding, "My greatest fear now is we're going to turn the guns on each other."

Several Democrats noted that the party, in belated imitation of the Republicans, was now building its own infrastructure of policy institutes to generate its positions and messages. John Podesta, the president of one such organization, the Center for American Progress, said he hoped that the party would not become bogged down in its long-running fight over moving left or center.

"There has to be a rearticulation in the party of a sense of core principles that I think people are confused about," said Mr. Podesta, who was chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

In one Senate race, in Republican-leaning Colorado, Ken Salazar, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, managed Tuesday to dispatch the beer magnate Pete Coors. Jim Carpenter, Mr. Salazar's campaign manager, said the candidate, a Roman Catholic, was "very clear that his faith was very important to him but he disagreed with the church on the issue of abortion." He said Mr. Salazar's roots in Colorado as a rancher, his personal success story and his service as state attorney general had earned him voters' trust, insulating him from attacks.

"It's difficult,'' Mr. Carpenter said, "for an East Coast senator to get the trust of the voters out here.''

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After the Voting: What May Lie Ahead for Business in America

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

THE IMPACT
After the Voting: What May Lie Ahead for Business in America
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

From Wall Street to Detroit, there were plenty of sighs of relief as it became clear that President Bush had won another term. As one auto executive said, "Bush has been a good president to work with."

But even as stocks rose on the news, the exuberant mood of business executives was tempered by worries about continuing high prices of oil, the nation's ballooning budget deficit and the increasing cost of health care. Military contractors, for example, expect that the Pentagon budget will flatten out, forcing the government to rein in spending for new weapons programs, as it needs to put more money into the war in Iraq.

And all employers - but particularly the auto industry, which is footing the bill for health benefits for thousands of retirees - are worried about the brisk rise in medical costs and whether the administration has a realistic plan for dealing with the problem.

The telecommunications and media industries expect the White House and their regulators to continue to step back and allow greater industry consolidation, even as regulators are faced with major decisions about the future of Internet and telephone services.

But the biggest smiles yesterday came from Wall Street executives, who were pleased with the tax cuts in the first Bush term and hope for more of the same from the second.

AUTOS
Taxes and Health Costs Top Detroit's Wish List

DETROIT, Nov. 3 - Even though Michigan was one of the rare blue states between the coasts, many executives of the Detroit automakers were privately wary of Senator John Kerry because he was recently a co-sponsor of an ambitious Senate proposal to increase fuel economy standards substantially.

"Kerry's past projections on fuel economy were scary," said an executive from one of the Big Three Detroit automakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Kerry's proposal, also sponsored by Senator John McCain, was bitterly opposed by the industry and handily defeated in the Senate in 2002.

"We need somebody that's willing to work with us," the executive added. "Clinton was great to work with, he was a Democrat. Bush has been a good president to work with. Whoever gets in office, they realize we're a huge part of the economy, creating jobs, and as a politician you don't want to hamper the job producers."

The Bush administration has close ties to the industry - Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, served as G.M.'s top lobbyist in the 1990's.

Top items on the auto industry's wish list in the second term of the Bush administration will be renewing tax credits for advanced-technology vehicles, including hybrid cars, and relief on soaring health care costs, which have been a crippling competitive burden for domestic automakers. Automakers based in Japan and Germany do not have a similar burden of health care spending on retirees.

From the standpoint of showroom traffic, executives and industry sales analysts saw the election as a distraction that was good to put behind them.

"We always like to remove the uncertainty in the marketplace," said Paul Ballew, G.M.'s top industry sales analyst. "Having said that, even with this election bubbling along, sales have held up pretty well."

Gary Dilts, the top sales analyst at Chrysler, said, "the guys on the showroom floor think this has been a negative distraction." -- DANNY HAKIM

MILITARY
Investor Euphoria Could Be Short-Lived

Shares of military companies rose on news of the Bush victory yesterday, but the euphoria could be short-lived. While President Bush's re-election and the return of a Republican majority in Congress assure a robust approach to Pentagon spending, the growing budget deficit and the costs of the war in Iraq could begin to take their toll.

"We might be seeing a bit of a false dawn," said Nick Fothergill, a Banc of America Securities analyst based in London, referring to a rally yesterday that sent shares of most military contractors up 3 to 4 percent.

Mr. Fothergill said the Pentagon budget, which will come to $417 billion for the 2005 fiscal year, could come under pressure as early as 2006, as continued war costs and a rising deficit force lawmakers to make choices. "The Bush budget is likely to get cut a little early," he added.

Those sentiments were echoed yesterday by James Albaugh, head of the defense business at the Boeing Company, the nation's second-largest military contractor after Lockheed Martin. At a Goldman Sachs investor conference in New York, Mr. Albaugh predicted a flattening in military spending as the government attempts to rein in the deficit and balance the need for more troops against Pentagon weapon modernization plans, Bloomberg News reported. The 2005 Pentagon budget includes $25 billion for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"You're going to see a reprioritization of many of the programs that the government is funding," Bloomberg News quoted Mr. Albaugh as saying. "All big programs will come under scrutiny because of their size." Increased military spending over the last few years has contributed to a $413 billion federal budget deficit, which Mr. Bush has said he wants to cut in half.

A victory by Senator John Kerry probably would not have led to much of a change in Pentagon spending, given the Republican control of Congress and strong bipartisan support for military spending. For that reason, Byron Callan, a military industry analyst with Merrill Lynch, said the sell-off in military stocks in late trading on Tuesday, as surveys of voters leaving the polls showed Mr. Kerry ahead, was unwarranted.

One Pentagon program that Mr. Kerry singled out for cuts was missile defense. Mr. Kerry proposed using $9 billion from the program's annual budget to add 40,000 troops.

"Does Bush have a mandate to spend gobs more on defense?" asked Mr. Callan of Merrill. "I don't think so." Because of that, Mr. Callan said that yesterday's rise in the military sector was "more of a sigh of relief than a sign of a whole new direction for defense."

The Pentagon budget, while it may rise and fall under different administrations, has a momentum of its own that makes it hard for Congress to rein in. With the long periods of development required for major weapons systems and planning done in five-year increments, major changes in military spending cannot happen quickly.

"Because of Iraq, there might be some slowdown in procurement," said Paul Nisbet, a military industry analyst with JSA Research Inc., based in Newport, R.I. "But that will last for only a year or two." -- LESLIE WAYNE

WALL STREET
For Corporations, Their Kind of Guy

For Wall Street firms, a second Bush term represents a lush dividend on the millions that their chief executives began raising for the president in the early days of his first term. Led by Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, executives on the Street embraced the supply-side policies of President Bush - underscored by sweeping cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes - that brought the most pro-Wall Street moves since Ronald Reagan began cutting taxes in 1981.

Expectations are rife that the president's economic platform will be even better for business in his second term as he pushes for such initiatives as private Social Security accounts and continued emphasis on lower taxes.

"Sure there is a quid pro quo," said Mallory Factor, a merchant banker and fund-raiser for the president. "It's a pro-growth economy, lower taxes and less regulation. The market's reaction speaks for itself."

Wall Street's full-throated support for President Bush comes despite a certain coolness that the president has had for the Street. He is the first Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower not to have a Treasury secretary with a Wall Street pedigree, and in public speeches he has been quick to blame the excesses of the stock market boom and bust for the mini-recession he inherited in his first term.

Wall Street has remained a vigorous backer all the same. Four out of the top contributors to the president's campaign hail from Wall Street - Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Goldman raised close to $2 million among them.

But analysts warn that Mr. Bush's market-friendly tax policies will do little to lift Wall Street profits if fears of a growing budget deficit result in a sustained rise in interest rates. That, in turn, could result in lower earnings for Wall Street firms as the long bull market in bonds finally recedes. Wall Street firms have made billions in trading bonds since the collapse of the stock market in 2001.

For the time being, though, Wall Street firms are mostly applauding a second term; they expect that the temporary cuts in the capital gains and dividend taxes of Mr. Bush's first term will now be made permanent. Analysts also foresee merger and acquisition activity to be more robust under Mr. Bush than it would have been under John Kerry, given the Bush administration's tendency not to interfere with large corporate mergers.

"There is a relief that this is over," said Frank Fernandez, the chief economist for the Securities Industry Association, the industry lobby. "This administration has a good track record on pro-investment policies. We know where they stand." -- LANDON THOMAS JR.

ENERGY
A Prospect for Oil Prices to Help Shape Policy

President Bush's victory comes at a time of near-record oil prices, and the issue could end up shaping his administration's energy policy over the next four years.

Crude oil prices have risen more than 70 percent since Mr. Bush came to office in January 2001, pushing gasoline and heating oil to record levels.

With most of the world's oil producers pumping at capacity, high prices threaten to slow economic growth in the United States, weighing on business costs and adding hundreds of dollars a year to households' expenses.

To try to offset this, analysts said, the administration is expected to endorse drilling for oil in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and to take some steps to limit demand.

But squaring these goals with the president's calls to reduce American dependency on oil from the Middle East could prove a challenge, especially for an administration headed by two former oilmen.

J. Robinson West, the chairman of PFC Energy, an energy adviser in Washington, noted that "one of the biggest applause lines in both campaigns came when they mentioned energy independence from the Middle East and Saudi Arabia."

"Of course, energy independence is a meaningless concept," Mr. West said, "but they will clearly try to increase oil supplies in the United States and make an effort to deal with demand."

The administration, he added, could be expected in the second term to encourage the development of hybrid cars, alternative fuels like natural gas, and renewable energy to limit the country's energy dependency by slowing the growth in demand.

Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, "The Prize,'' said: "The big challenge is the need to increase oil production over the next 20 years in very substantial volumes. We will see a focus on policies that encourage increased and diversified oil production."

The idea of more oil drilling in Alaska - part of the recommendations put forward by an energy task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001 - has been contested for years on the ground that it could harm the region's environment.

"They'll want to put the issue in front of the American public," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the PIRA Energy Group in New York. "But I don't think it will go through. There are still a lot of people in Congress opposed to it, and the new administration won't have the ability to break a filibuster."

One policy the president is not expected to change is his opposition to releasing oil from the strategic reserve to bring down prices. Quite the opposite, analysts said. Mr. Bush is expected to keep filling the reserve.

The administration's foreign policy will affect its energy policies - in particular, relations with Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

"Energy security in the United States is still focused on the Middle East," said Ian Bremmer, who heads the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. -- JAD MOUAWAD

HEALTH CARE
Mounting Costs and Tax Breaks

In a second term, the Bush administration expects the nation's burdensome health care bill to continue mounting at a brisk pace - from an estimated $1.79 trillion, or $6,167 a person, in 2004 to a projected $2.39 trillion, or $7,928 a person, in 2008.

As in its first term, the administration will seek to restrain the growth in spending and improve health quality by providing tax breaks, free-market incentives and greater choice for individuals in shopping for their own care.

At the same time, the administration says it will have only a limited role in regulating prices for drugs, medical devices and health services. Senator John Kerry had proposed a larger role for government in both paying for health care and controlling prices.

With the Bush victory, the shares of pharmaceutical makers like Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly, and for-profit health maintenance organizations like United HealthCare, Aetna and Wellpoint rose sharply yesterday. "We're seeing a big collective sigh of relief from those companies," said Kenneth Thorpe, a health care economist at Emory University.

But no matter who is in the White House, big policy challenges remain. Roughly 45 million people are uninsured in the United States, and an estimated 70 percent of them are employed. To increase coverage, the Bush administration supports creating tax credits and health savings accounts and associated health plans for small businesses. Those strategies are intended to reduce the cost of health insurance for small employers and individual workers. But those kinds of health plans typically require sizable out-of-pocket payments by individuals.

"Conservatives want to see universal health care by using tax credits and health savings accounts, and that should and will be on the agenda," said Robert Goldberg, director of the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group.

But a major expansion of tax credits and plans with tax incentives would be very costly. Many analysts are skeptical that the Bush administration will make a major commitment to expanding these programs when it has made maintaining income tax cuts for individuals its priority and the nation is running a huge budget deficit.

While health savings accounts will probably be expanded in the new Congress, according to Frank B. McArdle, a health policy specialist at Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm, he noted that "there will be no big shift, but a continued gradual shift toward an individual consumer marketplace."

Another change may come on the medical malpractice front. With a larger majority in the Senate, the Bush administration, analysts say, may well be able to win approval for legislation capping medical malpractice payouts, which Democrats have thwarted in the past.

Support for medical liability limits seems to be gaining ground nationally, with Florida, Nevada and Oregon passing state referendums capping malpractice payments on Tuesday. The votes on Wyoming's malpractice referendum were still being counted yesterday afternoon.

Despite the Bush victory, many industry experts expect a greater government role in health care in the long run. The pharmaceutical industry offers a good example. By the end of 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit program is in full operation, the government will be paying for half of all prescription drugs purchased in the United States, Richard Evans, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, estimated.

The appeal of using that buying power to curb price increases may prove irresistible, Mr. Evans said. "Bush isn't going there for political or ideological reasons, but he may eventually go there for economic reasons," he said. "For the pharmaceutical industry, I think the Bush re-election means we're taking the long road to government price influence instead of the short road under Kerry." -- STEVE LOHR and MILT FREUDENHEIM

TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Bigger, Faster, and Less Regulated

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 - Significant technological advances are rapidly changing the telecommunications and media industries, and giving a bigger role to Washington policy makers in determining industry winners and losers.

In the coming months, the Bush administration and its appointees at the Federal Communications Commission face major decisions about telephone services over the Internet, new wireless services and making broadband service more widely available.

As a result of the election results, those policy makers will probably embark on a course that continues to favor the four regional Bell companies and the nation's largest media conglomerates.

Tuesday's outcome also significantly increases the chances that Congress will begin to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996 next year. The landmark law, which reshaped the regulatory landscape, has already begun to come under heavy assault in regulatory decisions and court rulings.

The Senate Commerce Committee, a central player in crafting any legislation, will now come under the control of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who has a close working relationship with the new senior Democrat on that committee, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. (The current Republican head of the committee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, is stepping down as chairman, and the ranking Democrat, Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, is retiring.)

Many telecommunications regulations defy traditional partisan politics, and regulatory issues arose only briefly in the presidential campaign when Senator John Kerry said he opposed the administration's efforts to relax the ownership rules that had prevented the nation's largest media companies from expanding. For his part, President Bush said throughout the campaign that he was committed to making broadband service ubiquitous by 2007, although he and his aides offered few specific plans to achieve that goal.

Both the administration and its appointees in important regulatory positions have maintained for months that they intend to relax regulations to encourage investment in new technologies and to provide incentives for companies to expand high-speed Internet services.

In the coming weeks, the F.C.C., in response to an appeals court decision, is expected to issue new wholesale telephone rate rules that are all but certain to be significantly more favorable to the regional Bells than the old rules. Officials said the outcome might have been significantly less favorable to the Bell companies had Senator Kerry prevailed.

Administration officials, as well as top regulators at the F.C.C., have also said they prefer to take a deregulatory approach to rules governing telephone services over the Internet.

The administration has also supported efforts to relax rules that have restricted the nation's biggest media companies from expanding and entering new markets.

Last June, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia ordered the commission to reconsider its rules, issued last year, that would ease the way for media companies to grow. The commission has yet to respond to the order, either by announcing an appeal to the Supreme Court or by re-examining the rules.

The administration is expected to continue its policy of approving most proposed corporate mergers as the telephone and other technology industries continue toward consolidation. -- STEPHEN LABATON

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Overhauling Tax Code and Social Security Are Among Priorities

The New York Times
November 4, 2004

Overhauling Tax Code and Social Security Are Among Priorities
By MARIA NEWMAN

A day after declaring victory in an especially divisive election, President Bush said at a news conference that "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals,'' adding that "I earned capital in this election, and I'm going to spend it.''

Mr. Bush called his campaign against terror one of his highest priorities, but also said that he planned to use his political capital to improve the economy in this country. He listed a familiar array of campaign issues - Social Security, education, overhauling the intelligence system and simplifying the tax code - that he said he wanted to work on in his second term.

"With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results,'' the president said. On Tuesday, Mr. Bush captured 51 percent of the popular vote, compared with just under 48 percent in 2000.

Arriving at the news conference at the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, after meeting with his cabinet, Mr. Bush said he had made no decisions about which members would stay on for a second term, or who would go, in spite of speculation about some departures.

"I have made no decisions on my cabinet and/or White House staff,'' he said. "There will be some changes. I don't know who they will be. It's inevitable there will be changes. It happens in every administration. To a person, I am proud of the work they have done. And I fully understand we're about to head into the period of intense speculation as to who is going to stay and who's not going to stay.''

Indeed, there is already talk that Attorney General John Ashcroft and the secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, are the most likely to relinquish their posts for what administration officials have said are personal reasons. Mr. Bush said he was going to Camp David this afternoon and "I'll begin the process of thinking about the cabinet and the White House staff.''

Mr. Bush, looking rested after a rigorous fight for re-election that had both candidates departing from tradition and making campaign appearances on Election Day, was jovial with the press corps, but tried to regiment the exchanges by limiting reporters to one question each, with no follow-ups.

He talked about what he wanted in a cabinet for his second term, when some current members will inevitably be replaced, and he said that in spite of his reputation for surrounding himself with "yes people,'' he actually preferred to have around him those who will not be intimidated by the Oval Office.

"They're getting ready to come in and tell me what for and they walk in and get overwhelmed by the atmosphere, and they say, 'Man, you're looking pretty,' " he said. "And therefore you need people to walk in on those days when you're not looking so good and say, 'You're not looking so good, Mr. President.' ''

Mr. Bush, asked about the war in Iraq, would not say how much more he thought it would cost the American people, nor whether the conflict would require higher troop levels.

"Our commanders will have that which they need to complete their missions,'' he said. As for additional funds, he said he would work with military leaders and budget officials "to bring forth to Congress a realistic assessment of what the cost will be.''

The president was asked how he would work toward a spirit of bipartisanship after an election campaign that portrayed a country bitterly divided and the two parties far apart philosophically. The president said that some of the divisiveness was endemic to Washington, and was fed by leaders of both parties and the news media.

"One of the disappointments of being here in Washington is how bitter this town can become and how divisive,'' he said. "I'm not blaming one party or the other. It's just the reality of Washington, D.C. - sometimes exacerbated by you, because it's great sport. It's really - it's entertaining for some. It also makes it difficult to govern at times.

"But nevertheless, my commitment is there,'' he continued. "I am fully prepared to work with both Republican, Democrat leadership to advance an agenda that I think makes a big difference for the country.''

Mr. Bush cited as an example of bipartisanship the No Child Left Behind Act, passed early in his first term, and said he would like to replicate that spirit of cooperation on other issues. (Democrats and other critics have complained, however, that the education reform bill has never been properly financed by the administration or the Republican-controlled Congress.)

Mr. Bush won re-election with the support of many people who told exit-pollsters that moral values were their top priority in choosing a president, especially voters who called themselves Evangelicals. He was asked at the news conference about the concerns of some Americans about the role the president's Christian faith plays in his decision-making.

"My answer to people is, I will be your president regardless of your faith,'' Mr. Bush said. "The great tradition of America is one where people can worship the way they want to worship. And if they choose not to worship, you're just as patriotic as your neighbor.''

He went on to say: "I am glad people of faith voted in this election. I don't think you ought to read anything into the politics, the moment, about whether or not this nation will become a divided nation over religion.''

The president was also asked about criticism throughout the campaign, and even from some within his own party, of growing federal budget deficits.

"The key to making sure that the deficit is reduced is for there to be on the one hand spending discipline,'' he said, adding that he would like the president to have line-item veto power. "The other way to make sure that the deficit is decreased is to grow the economy.''

Mr. Bush would give no hint of whom he might nominate to the Supreme Court, a question that has taken on greater significance with the disclosure that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is ill with cancer.

"First of all, there's no vacancy for the Supreme Court, and I will deal with the vacancy when there is one,'' he said. "And when I told the people on the campaign trail that I'll pick somebody who knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law - you might have heard that several times - I meant what I said.''

During the campaign debates with his opponent, Senator John Kerry, Mr. Bush was asked what kind of standards he would use in picking judicial candidates, and whether he would use the abortion issue as a litmus test. Today he alluded to that.

"If people are interested in knowing the kind of judges I'll pick, look at the record,'' he said. "I've sent up a lot of judges - well- qualified people who know the law, who represent a judicial temperament that I agree with, and who are qualified to hold the bench.''

That has not always been the view on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have worked hard to block a handful of nominees for the federal bench that they considered too rigidly conservative.

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IRAQ NEWS

abcnews.go.com

IRAQ NEWS

Gunmen Seize Five in Two Iraq Kidnappings
Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home, Iraqi officials said Wednesday, while four Jordanian truck drivers were seized by assailants in a separate kidnapping. (AP)

Senior Iraqi Oil Official Killed
Gunmen have shot dead a senior figure in the Iraqi oil ministry on his way to work, officials have said. (BBC)

Car Bomb Attacks in Iraq Leave 8 Dead
At least eight people were killed in a string of car bomb attacks across Iraq that targeted symbols of the US-backed government yesterday, as saboteurs blasted its vital oil industry to the north leaving pipelines in flames. (AFP)

Captors Threaten Hassan Handover
Gunmen holding hostage Margaret Hassan said they would hand her to militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if British troops do not leave Iraq within 48 hours. (BBC)

Hungarian Troops To Exit Iraq In March
Hungary's new Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has said the country's 300 troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of March 2005, a government spokeswoman said. (Al Jazeera)

G.I. in Abu Ghraib Abuse Is Spared Time in Jail One of the first seven American soldiers charged in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq will be spared jail time under an agreement approved last week by a military judge. (NY Times)

Insurgents Blow Up an Iraqi Oil Pipeline
A severe blow was dealt to the national economy, even as car bombs and gun battles across the country left at least 12 Iraqis dead (NY Times)

Saddam's Family Dismisses Head Of Defense Team
Toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's family on Tuesday sacked the head of his defence team amid bickering over the handling of his case, as they await his trial on charges of crimes against humanity. (AFP)

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An astonishing but accurate statement

From blogforamerica.com

More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history.

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Kerry concedes without a fight

Americans on both sides of the political aisle are in shock at the failure of John Kerry to wait until all votes have truly been counted, as he promised he would in the campaign, before declaring victory or conceding defeat.

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The press is failing to publicly and loudly investigate election fraud

The press is failing to publicly and loudly investigate election fraud
and corruption in Florida, Ohio, and other states. Why? There were many
problems throughout the country. In Florida there were many reports of
voters using touch screen voting machines who voted for Kerry but the
screen confirmed their votes for Bush! There were hundreds of thousands
of Democratic votes that were thrown out by Republican operatives in
various states, especially in Florida and Ohio. Where is the press? Why
isn't this the top news of the day?

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