The iron laws of column deadlines decree that I must write this column before Election Day, and that you will read it afterward. Inevitably, therefore, you must be prepared to wade through a number of wasteful “If thises,” and “If, on the other hand, thats,” for which I sincerely apologize.
Even so, you may well read this column before the results are known for certain. The polls suggest that the election will be extremely close, and, if so, you can bet the ranch that those 10,000 lawyers on each side won’t concede until all kinds of election disputes are sorted out and decided by the relevant courts. The apparent loser’s legal strategists will tell him (and us) that 11,000 “provisional votes” cast in State X haven’t been validated and counted yet, and that when they are they will shift the state’s electoral votes to his side and make him the winner … And so on and on …
Sooner or later, however, the tumult and the shouting will die, and it will gradually become apparent that Candidate A did, in fact, win the election. The loser will concede, and the curtain will rise on a new administration. What will it be like?
President Kerry
The changes will, of course, be most dramatic if Sen. John Kerry wins, so let’s begin with that hypothesis. Almost certainly, the Republicans will continue to control the House of Representatives, and, if so, President Kerry will have the devil of a time implementing all those “plans” he told us he has for curing what’s wrong with America. The House of Representatives controls the nation’s purse strings, and little of major importance can be done without its consent. In recent decades, it has become almost customary for the White House and the Congress to be controlled by different parties, and the result has been … gridlock. Whether this is a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion; that it will happen is indisputable.
On the other hand, a president can accomplish a certain amount by issuing “executive orders,” and we can be sure President Kerry will be a fruitful source of these. In addition, he appoints the members of innumerable government agencies that can make major policy decisions. And finally, he can and will appoint judges of his own political stripe – though his choice of Supreme Court justices may well precipitate some truly historic battles with the Senate.
In foreign affairs, it’s hard to picture President Kerry cutting and running in Iraq (however much large factions in the Democratic Party will want exactly that), but his insistence on proceeding with the support of France and Germany makes it hard to imagine any successful initiatives in the Middle East – or, for that matter, elsewhere. Here, too, gridlock will prevail.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party, lacking a president who can shape the party’s image and policies, will probably spend the years until 2008 squabbling over how much influence the neoconservatives ought to have in that year’s presidential nomination, and in the party generally.
President Bush
If, on the other hand (here we go!), President George W. Bush is re-elected, there may well be some changes in his Cabinet. (Secretary Powell will almost surely want out.) There will undoubtedly be pressures to devise an “exit strategy” for the U.S. forces in Iraq, but President Bush is likelier to insist on some innovative ways of suppressing the insurgent forces there. Nor will he flinch from taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran and North Korea from becoming full-fledged nuclear powers.
In the domestic field, a second Bush administration – not facing gridlock with a Congress controlled by the opposing party – might well see important reforms in the Social Security system, to ensure its viability, as well as further steps to strengthen health care without turning it into a government boondoggle on the disastrous Canadian model.
Meanwhile the Democrats, if they lose to Bush, will almost surely have to undergo some dark night of the soul and retool themselves to become a more effective opposition.
And ahead …
Let me end with another prediction on the assumption that Sen. Kerry wins. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential ambitions will have to be put off for at least eight years, and that upwardly mobile family will switch to backing President Bill for U.N. secretary-general when Kofi Annan’s term ends next year.
