Bush enters second term with mandate for agenda.

Byline: Mark Silva

WASHINGTON _ Reconfirmed to lead a nation facing a dangerous era abroad and a divided society at home, President Bush will enter his second term with an historic opportunity to pursue his agenda _ but also to reunite his enemies.

In winning re-election, with both a clear majority and a record number in the popular vote, Bush has a strengthened political ally in Congress with a bolstered Republican majority. This could enable Bush to both enact new policies and deliver on unfulfilled promises of his first term.

Yet Bush also will lead an electorate more polarized than ever, and the passions of this election are likely to smolder for months to come.

In addition, he faces a challenge of repairing international allegiances riven with a largely unilateral foreign policy, bringing to justice the terrorists who attacked New York City and the Pentagon and resolving the protracted conflict in Iraq while fulfilling the promise of free elections there.

Unlike his father, popular at war but burdened with a slumping economy, Bush has won a chance to finish what he started. Bush is, in the words of longtime friend and former aide Joe Allbaugh, "a president comfortable in his own skin," and his re-election should make him more confident in the power of his own personal persuasion.

"A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation," Bush said Wednesday, accepting his re-election with an appeal to the nearly half of all voters who supported Democrat John Kerry.

Bush has a stated second-term agenda of simplifying the federal tax code, winning private retirement savings accounts for younger workers, improving public education and, certainly not least difficult, waging an ongoing war against international terrorism.

This president has much working for him in his second term, according to a seasoned Republican pollster, Neil Newhouse. For starters, as Bush himself said Wednesday, this was his "last campaign."

"Unencumbered by pressures of re-election, he has an opportunity to push for goals that he may have deemed too politically risky," said Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies in Virginia.

"With GOP majorities in the House and Senate increased, he should have a little easier time getting legislation passed," he said. "Given the Democrats' disarray, and the president's convincing win, the Democrats may lack a unifying voice or force to provide opposition."

But in order to accomplish his agenda, Bush must restore relationships in Congress shattered in an increasingly partisan rift that started with most members of the House and Senate supporting his tax cuts and education reforms and also the invasion of Iraq.

A nearly two-year election campaign for the White House among Democrats increasingly challenging Bush has replaced the early coalition-building of the Bush White House with a bunker-like relationship between Republicans and Democrats in Washington.

Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser and "architect" of the re-election campaign, predicts an improved environment in Washington.

"I do think that in a second term there is a likelihood that some of the ... partisanship will drop away," Rove predicted. "We've reached out and worked with Democrats who are willing to work with us."

This will include a renewed pitch on Social Security changes. Bush wants to allow younger workers to invest some of their retirement savings privately, in order to build a better "nest egg" than what Social Security provides for the elderly.

At the same time, he promises to protect benefits for current workers, including Baby Boomers such as himself. Opponents maintain, however, that Bush's privatization of accounts will both jeopardize investors and undermine the financial health of the system.

Not the least of his concerns during the second term: Waging war against terrorism, which he made the linchpin of his re-election. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 with promises to avert "nation-building" with the U.S. military, says he wants to help "emerging democracies" in Iraq and Afghanistan. He maintains Iraq can hold elections in January.

Some question Bush's sincerity for repairing any of the relations that have made Europeans skeptical of the United States' motives, accusing the administration of going it alone on some foreign policy issues.

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(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.

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