Bush's Triumph: 2004 Election: In Victory's Glow

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So consider the obstacles Bush overcame and the rules that were broken by his victory. Since the country previously met at the polls, voters have encountered a record deficit, job losses, airport shoe searches, rising bankruptcies and bruising battles over stem-cell research and the definition of marriage. On the eve of Election Day, fully 55% of voters said the country was moving in the wrong direction. Only 49% approved of the job the President was doing, and anything below 50% is supposed to be fatal to an incumbent. A war that Bush promised would cost no more than $50 billion a year is running at nearly three times that. He was attacked by well-organized and well-funded detractors who described him as a liar, a fraud, a drug abuser, a warmonger, an incurious zealot, an agent of the Saudis, a puppet of his goblin Vice President. And he faced an opponent with a long record of public service, a shiny record from a war Bush had avoided and a Democratic base suffused with a cold and implacable hatred, a group that had never been so united--not over the war, not over tax policy or job losses or health care but simply in the purpose of bringing this presidency it so despised to an end.

Bush says the war on terrorism is not a clash of civilizations, but this campaign was, by his careful design. He never really pretended to have much to say to Democrats beyond I will keep you safe. He relied largely instead on inspiring those who agreed with him already, who don't want to see gay couples kissing on the evening news, think stem-cell research has been oversold and believe abortion on demand is a sin. Even Republicans who disagreed with him on one or more issues--the fiscal conservatives who prefer less extravagant government spending, the civil libertarians who would like a less intrusive Patriot Act--were still prepared to side with him. His 97% approval rate within his party surpassed even Ronald Reagan's. Bush plainly understood that his best weapon against Kerry was less what Bush did than who he was. You may disagree with me, he said at every stop, but you know where I stand.

That message alone was meant to be a source of comfort, particularly since he was also telling voters that everything had changed since the last time they elected a President and no amount of wishful thinking could turn the calendar back. After a happy and lucky decade, the U.S. is locked in a war that will last the rest of our lives. "The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror," Bush said Saturday in Grand Rapids, Mich. Of Kerry, he argued that if you don't even admit it's a war, you can't be trusted to fight it. Critics who saw his faith in contagious democracy as naive may have missed the point that the American people have always been attracted to the idea. At the very least, voters may not punish a President for placing such hope in the principles they value most.