How To Make The Victory Stick

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The Iraqis have proved resistant to "reconstruction" efforts in the past. Three years after the British tried to tame Mesopotamia, the Times of London complained about the futility of the project and--Karl Rove, take note--about its impact on domestic British politics: "While [the government] has spent nearly £150,000,000 since the Armistice upon semi-nomads in Mesopotamia [it] can find only £200,000 a year for the regeneration of our slums, and have had to forbid all expenditure under the Education Act of 1918." (The government was defeated by Labor in 1922.)

This is not to say that Bush will fail in Iraq. It is to say that success will demand painstaking effort. The President has excelled at grand themes, but he seems to believe that the detail work necessary to give themes substance can be delegated or finessed. His domestic agenda is a joke. There is no program--except for the never-ending quest for unwarranted (and unwanted, if the polls are right) tax cuts and a quietly corrosive effort to undermine existing government rules and regulations. Bush faces rebellion by members of his own party in Congress who are dismayed by the superficial nature of his Administration. "When was the last time the White House took an active leadership position on anything?" a Senate Republican asked last week, and then answered the question. "The education bill, two years ago. We get general 'principles' but no detailed proposals, no guidance, no leadership."

This, then, is a hinge moment in the history of Bush II. There has been lots of drama. Saddam and the Taliban have been routed. A tax cut has passed, another is proposed. But real progress, at home and abroad, requires real governance. Two questions will have to be answered in the 18 months before Election Day 2004: Is this Administration going to concern itself only with grand gestures? And if those gestures are not backed by substance, will the American people notice or care?