Why India stands to gain from Bush Part Two

If this election could prove to be a defining moment for American domestic politics, it could also turn out to be an occasion for the transformation of the global order created at the end of the Second World War.

In gaining an impressive majority of the popular vote that eluded him in the 2000 elections, expanding Republican control in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Bush will claim an endorsement of the controversial policies he had pursued at home and abroad in the last four years.

Many will question Bush’s claim and contest his agenda to transform the internal and external orientation of America. But the inability to effectively challenge the incumbent President could severely dent the morale of the Democratic Party. A shattering all-round defeat amid high expectations of victory is bound to induce self-doubt among the Democrats about their future direction.

It is an election that Democrats should have won easily. After all, Bush had plunged the nation into an apparently unwinnable war in Iraq on grounds that turned out to be unfounded. More than a thousand American soldiers had died for a cause that seems unclear to many Americans.

Bush had also presided over one of the biggest job losses in recent American history. And international oil prices have touched historic highs above 50 dollars a barrel. Yet Bush has come through handsomely. Underlying this paradox is the dissipation, perhaps irreversible, of the “New Deal” coalition set up at the beginning of twentieth century has begun to dissipate, perhaps irreversibly.

The high voter turnout after a divisive political discourse was widely believed to favour the Democrats, who hoped to bring in the poor, minorities and the young in large numbers to defeat Bush.

But it is the Republican Party and evangelical Christians who seem to have mobilised social conservatives massively to deliver an unprecedented popular vote to Bush.

The 58 million votes and more polled by Bush, Republicans have proclaimed, is the highest ever garnered by an American Presidential candidate. This huge vote bank could form the basis of an enduring Republican majority in the coming years and push the Democrats into the wilderness of political opposition for a long time.

In the wake of the Great Depression in the 1920s, President Franklin Roosevelt had constructed the rainbow coalition of workingmen and women, the middle classes, southern Conservatives, and northern liberals to form the party of the permanent government.

In the last two decades, beginning with the Ronald Reagan Presidency in the 1980s, the Republican Party began to chip away at the base of Democrats by weaning away conservatives from the south and blue-collar workers in the north. In 1994, Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives for the first time in decades and have not ceded it since.

By demonising liberalism entrenched on the two coasts and the cultural elite symbolised by Hollywood, aligning with the Religious Right, appealing to the middle classes with the promises of smaller government and lower taxes, the Republican Party has managed to expose the brittleness of the New Deal coalition.

Bill Clinton regained the White House for the Democrats by shedding the label of liberalism and inventing himself as a “New Democrat”. Like all social democratic formations in western democracies, the Democrats will have to become clones of the Republicans or perish.

The American centre has moved to right in a big way thanks to the war on terrorism, a profound internal divide on issues of morality, and the rise of a new assertive nationalism.

In the next four years, Bush is likely to persist with the ideological framework he has made no attempt to conceal in the first term-lower taxes despite deficit, smaller government, free trade, and social conservatism.

The restructuring of American capitalism at home will be accompanied by a foreign policy that seeks to reorder international relations.

From the war on terrorism to nuclear politics, from rethinking the role of the United Nations in the management of international security to reformulating American military strategy, Bush has come up with unconventional ideas.

Old Europe, that contested American war in Iraq, could potentially a big loser as Bush seeks to reconfigure the global balance of power. China should be regretting the decision to show its preference for Kerry during the last days of the campaign. A sullen Middle East will remain the theatre of confrontation for the forseeable future.

Japan and India, the two Asian powers aspiring for a global role, could stand to gain as the old international order begins to unravel—but only if Tokyo and New Delhi have the gumption to seize the moment.