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The polarization of America must cease, Mr. President

The question of who holds the presidency doesn’t change the issues the nation faces now and for the next four years. There are decisions to be made by the president and Congress that will have repercussions for all Americans for decades: War and peace; health care costs and their containment or payment; energy costs and the dwindling supply of fossil fuels; understanding, respect and tolerance for conflicting views, including moral questions that should not be answered by law; this nation’s place in an evolving new world order that is not an empty catchphrase, but a reality.

President George W. Bush will be in office for four more years. Sen. John Kerry conceded the election just as we went to press. Bush’s administration, which has failed so far to show us that he understands the gravity of such decisions, must come around to reflect some kind of compromise that reflects the George W. Bush we once expected to be leading us.

In 2000, Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative.” He barely won the Electoral College (by Supreme Court fiat) and lost the popular vote.

On entering office, he immediately took a hard turn to the right, appointing John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, ad nauseum. One can’t help but have some sense of fear about what he’ll do now that he’s won 51 percent of the vote and—very probably—a sizeable electoral edge. Bob Woodward, who knows this administration well, has said that he thinks a second Bush term will be much more pragmatic and that he’ll move back to the middle. We can only hope that this is true.

With both the Senate and the House more firmly in the GOP’s hands, Bush might be tempted to run roughshod over the Democrats until the mid-term elections in ‘06. Those two years and how he handles the presidency in them are crucial. After that, he’ll be a lame duck, and he won’t have the same level of power to exert on Congress that he has enjoyed and continues to enjoy.

Besides the war, the whole of the Middle East and its worsening dilemma, there are two key domestic issues where Bush could shape the future of the country for years to come. He will be nominating at least two, probably three, and possibly four Supreme Court justices. While he has said that he does not have a “litmus test” (i.e. an anti-abortion requirement) for his nominees, we can only hope that the judges he appoints will tend toward moderation rather than applying right-wing “moral imperatives” to the Constitution.

Also, as we’ve discussed in endorsing Sen. Kerry, his worthy opponent, President Bush could make some real inroads on health-care issues. He should take an aggressive stance toward cost containment and the provision of adequate medical services to all Americans on the basis of their need, regardless of status or income.

There is really no reason to believe that he will do the right things on health care, but we can still hold out hope for it, especially with Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist in the Senate majority leader’s post. Trained and experienced as a doctor, Frist understands medical needs, and he could carry the president’s mail on a program to address them.

Those who voted for President Bush in 2000 because they felt he’d be at least as moderate in his views and actions as his father was in the White House have been sorely disappointed. With no more of a mandate than he has secured this year, he cannot ignore the nation’s division, the polarization that it is suffering on right-left issues. If he doesn’t move toward the middle ground, he exacerbates that polarization. He doesn’t need to court the right wing of his party and pander to it any more. Reelection is no longer a consideration.

In the Middle East, he must be more pragmatic. He must take up the Israeli-Palestinian question and salvage some semblance of a positive solution to the tar baby he’s stuck the country into in Iraq. If he fails to do both of those things in his second term, terrorism will still be a large, probably larger, threat four years from now than it is today.

Both domestically and in his foreign policy, it is time for Bush to prove himself a “uniter, not a divider” by coming back to the spirit of moderation that he showed before the 2000 votes were cast, to stop governing arrogantly, to admit mistakes and to change course when change is warranted. Politically, there is no more reason to stick to the pole on the right. We are about to find out what he is really made of and what he truly believes. We can only hope for the best.

November 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 45 © 2004 Metro Pulse