OUR short national nightmare is over. My guy won.
And truth to tell, it feels pretty lousy.
It’s not because George W. Bush won ugly, as many Democrats insist. Bush and his lawyers did what they had to do to defend his legitimate victory, and in turn the rule of law. Team Bush has nothing to be ashamed of.
But that’s cold comfort to Bush and his backers, given the circumstances surrounding that victory, and considering the awesome struggle ahead.
On the cusp of the Battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare’s Henry V describes his camp thus: “Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide.”
That’s how the bruised and battered Republicans look now.
They hold the House by a relative handful of seats, the Senate by the smallest possible margin. Bush will be inaugurated having lost the popular vote, and having been granted the presidency by a muddled, half-hearted Supreme Court decision.
Result: A substantial number of Americans believe Bush stole the election. These people are objectively wrong. But they are unpersuadable. And they aren’t going to go away.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, as usual, has been outrageous. He was on the “Today” show yesterday announcing mass protests for January. By afternoon, aware that Gore was planning to concede later in the evening, Jackson said there would be no healing “until this issue of legitimacy is settled.”
Those who think that the issue will ever be settled for Jesse are fools. The man has bills to pay, after all, and a public personality to maintain. Never mind the damage his self-serving activism will do to racial comity.
Is Bush strong enough to stand up to racist bullying from Jackson and the NAACP? Please. He’s no Rudy Giuliani.
Barring a near-miraculous act of bipartisan diplomacy by Bush, mainstream Democrats will behave in more or less the same obstreperous fashion. They have little to lose and almost everything to gain.
Bush’s extraordinarily weak political position, his lack of an ideological core, and the absence of a Reagan-like gift for communication – all these things will force him to make generous compromises with the Democrats.
Over time, this may erode his support with his base. There’s already worried talk among social conservatives, Bush’s most loyal supporters, that the new president will sell them out on abortion, quotas, gay marriage and similar issues.
He didn’t campaign on social conservatism, for one thing, and he has no reason to spend any of his scant political capital fighting hard on this turf.
You watch: His first Supreme Court nomination will be openly pro-abortion, as a conciliatory gesture to Democrats. Social conservatives will be told, as we always are by the GOP, that we just have to understand.
Conservatives have rightly avoided criticizing Bush during this post-election period, concentrating instead on defending him against the revolting attacks from the Gore forces. Sticking up for Bush by attacking Gore was easy.
How hard will it be for the right to defend a moderate Bush administration, particularly if it proves itself too willing to cave to the Democrats and defer to hostile media opinion?
Conservatives were willing to fall on their swords for Ronald Reagan, who had to compromise all the time with a Democratic Congress. It’s hard to see Bush maintaining that kind of necessary enthusiasm within his own ranks.
Conservatives are natural pessimists, and I’ll be thrilled to be proved wrong. Still, slouching toward Inauguration Day, I keep thinking of another line from “Henry V,” uttered by a soldier on the eve of Agincourt: “We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it.”
e-mail: dreher@nypost.com