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In this case Mr. Bush was told that his triumph was a historic one, establishing an extraordinary precedent for a Republican president in his first midterm elections by actually gaining seats, and that he may even have permanently realigned politics, assuring his own party's dominance for the next great electoral cycle.
The quickest way to disprove such rosy predictions is to believe them. American politics is a wasteland littered with the bones of parties that won "historic" midterm elections and soared confidently towards defeat two years later. Two examples are the Democrats in 1982 and the Republicans in 1994, and they point to the same bipartisan moral: Overconfidence comes before a fall. What makes this lesson hard for the GOP to absorb in 2002, however, is that the election was a precedent-breaking one and that it really does contain within itself the seeds of a permanent realignment in a Republican direction. But since it also contains the seeds of an emerging Democratic majority, both parties have a great deal to play for — and to guard against. To understand this, look at exactly why the Republicans won. Most commentators have rightly seized on September 11 as the prime cause of the GOP victory. Republicans were enthused, independents attracted rightwards, and Democrats disheartened because they all sensed that George Bush represented the feelings and instincts of the American people about the war on terrorism better than the Democrats did. That representation went beyond specific policies. To be sure, most voters preferred the Republican positions on issues related to September 11. Mr. Bush's determination to disarm Saddam Hussein seemed more sensible to most Americans than the convoluted argument of Senator Daschle that Iraq was a distraction from the vital matter of the economy. Similarly, when the Democrats held up the president's Homeland Security bill in order to preserve union privileges, they seemed to be taking a frivolous view of national security. Anyone interested in self-preservation was bound to find the GOP the more attractive of the two alternatives. But September 11 had transformed America and Americans culturally at a level that went deeper than policies but that had an impact on politics. In brief, it made patriotism and national unity culturally respectable again — "United We Stand" — and it undermined the social prestige of attitudes such as rebellion and dissent and of policies such as multiculturalism that the sixties had injected into the body politic. Since the GOP is the party of patriotism and national unity and the Democrats are the party of dissent and multiculturalism — everybody knows this even though they feel constrained to deny it whenever these points are publicly raised — September 11 helped the GOP at the polls. It created a national mood in which Republican attitudes seemed admirable and apposite and Democratic ones off-key and off the point. This new national mood of sober patriotism is almost certainly not a passing one. It will last at least as long as the war on terror, and if the terrorists score some dramatic successes, it will probably intensify. If the GOP can attract new supporters with policies rooted in this deep cultural change, it will have a real chance of becoming the new natural party of government. In order to do so, however, it will have to overcome long-term trends that favor the Democrats. They have been pinning their hopes for an emerging Democratic majority on a mixture of demographics and multiculturalism. They calculate that Latino, Asian, and black voters who vote heavily Democrat will sharply increase owing to immigration until they eventually outnumber the Republican-leaning white vote — sometime after 2008. And they rely on a national culture that was suffused with multiculturalism until September 11 to keep those minorities in ethnic ghettoes allied to the Democratic party. Neither calculation was disproved by last Tuesday's election. On the contrary, the key to the GOP's victory was differential turnout. More Republicans and fewer Democrats turned out to vote than in recent elections. When we examine that differential turnout through the lens of demography, we see that the white vote increased substantially; the GOP's share of the white vote increased; and minority turnout either fell or remained stable (except in Texas.) There was little evidence of minority voters crossing over to the GOP in large numbers. And Latino voters in particular remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Democrats-the largest exception being New York where Governor Pataki took giant strides to the Left to attract their votes. (My UPI colleague, Steve Sailer, examines these trends in scrupulous detail.) This combination of trends should worry the GOP. For turnout could easily reverse to favor the Democrats in a future election (It is invariably higher in presidential elections anyway.) Yet the share of the electorate accounted for by Democrat-leaning minority voters is set to rise inexorably because of the currently very high levels of immigration. That mixture must install the Democrats in office eventually — unless Mr. Bush is able to shape the new spirit of sober American patriotism into the foundation for a new American majority that unites whites and ethnic minorities. He will not build such a majority by, for instance, appeasing Latino pressure groups with multicultural appeals such as support for bilingual education since such appeals will depress the white turnout that gave the GOP victory last week. Nor will such an approach win over many Latinos as the elections also established. Indeed, if Republicans address Latinos as Latinos rather than simply as fellow Americans, they "privilege" multicultural ideology over American patriotism; they dishearten their own natural supporters in the Hispanic community; and they strengthen the minority psychology that keeps the rest voting for Democrats and multiculturalism. And the same is true for other minorities. If the Bush coalition is to succeed the Roosevelt and Reagan coalitions as the governing majority of the next few decades, then President Bush will have to succeed in three very subtle and elusive tasks. First, he must make the GOP the unmistakable voice and representative of the new patriotism. At present Republicans are no more than its lucky beneficiary. Thus far, Mr. Bush has shied away from fights over sensitive issues. He must now be ready to argue explicitly that the U.S. is better defended by a Republican policy of military strength than by the Democrats' diplomatic multilateralism-and that an America united by Republican ideas will resist terrorism more steadily than an America divided by Democratic ideology. Which brings us to the second point: Mr. Bush must proclaim a vigorous new policy of assimilationism to draw ethnic minorities our of the multicultural ghettoes where their lobbies have led them and into a new version of the traditional melting pot. A durable Republican majority can be built only on the basis of assimilation. Assimilation reassures the white majority that the common American identity is a great ideal worthy of support. It appeals to those sizeable minorities in the various minority communities who have firmly and perhaps painfully chosen America over their former home and who therefore see multiculturalism either as simply baffling or as a roundabout way to deny them full acceptance as Americans. It is fully in tune with the national mood after September 11. And it gives the GOP a powerful message that attracts its potential supporters in all ethnic groups — rather than attracting some at the cost of annoying others. And, third, he must reduce and reform immigration. If he fails to do that, it will undermine the GOP's position across the board. Current high levels of immigration retard and obstruct assimilation by fostering ethnic ghettoes, enabling immigrants already here to live culturally apart from the host society, and sharpening the sense of ethnic difference throughout society that underlies multiculturalism. Because immigrants are in general poorer than native-born Americans, they swell the constituencies for the government programs, regulation and higher taxes that are the province of the Democrats. And as we have already seen, immigration directly increases the electoral support for Democrats after a short time lag. As the example of New York's Governor Pataki demonstrates, Republicans end up having to choose between changing their policy on immigration and changing their policies on everything else. These are not easy tasks — which may be why so far the administration has shrunk from them. As the elections demonstrated, however, there has never been a better time to attempt them. |
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hen
a victorious Roman general was granted a triumphal procession through
the city, a slave was assigned to stand behind him in his chariot whispering
"Remember that thou are mortal." When an American president
enjoys an electoral triumph like that enjoyed by George W. Bush earlier
this month, exactly the opposite happens: Pundits and analysts assure
him that he is now immortal. 
