No more the ‘accidental president’

Washington: Call it affirmation or reaffirmation, but the midterm election has given a powerful boost to George W. Bush, the conservative ag...

Washington: Call it affirmation or reaffirmation, but the midterm election has given a powerful boost to George W. Bush, the conservative agenda and the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

By retaking the Senate, increasing their majority in the House and strengthening their grip on their Electoral College base in the South, the Bush-led Republicans achieved substantially more than most observers thought likely.

For the past two years, ever since he won the White House while losing the popular vote and having to turn to conservative justices on the Supreme Court for confirmation of his victory, Bush has struggled against the label ‘‘accidental president.’’… It now appears that it was the Democrats who had gained from political accidents, enjoying their shaky Senate majority only because a sympathy vote for an airplane crash victim in Missouri was followed by a fit of pique from an iconoclastic Vermonter.

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Voter interviews that my Washington Post colleagues and I did in mid-September showed us that Bush supporters were more highly motivated at that point than Democrats. The Republicans we met had a clear reason to back Bush; it was their way of demonstrating their loyalty to the commander in chief of the war on terrorism… A president who moved so boldly on a shaky political base will surely attempt far more now that his party is in the ascendancy.

The fecklessness of congressional Democrats, who lacked the nerve to say what most of them really believe about Bush’s tax cuts and his path to war with Iraq, made it easier for the president to look like the rare politician with the courage of his convictions.

Excerpted from an article in ‘The Washington Post’, November 8