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No Small Ball
Rich Galen Monday January 17, 2005
Three days on, President George W. Bush will be sworn in for his second term as President of the United States.
Second terms are not the norm. Since the end of Dwight Eisenhower there have been only two full two-term Presidencies: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Kennedy was assassinated;
Johnson chose not to run for a second time on his own because of Viet Nam;
Nixon was elected to a second term, but didn't survive it;
Ford was not elected to his own term, having been defeated by Jimmy Carter;
Carter was defeated by Reagan.
George H.W. Bush was defeated by Clinton.
President Bush has promised a significant - historic - agenda for his second term: The overhaul of the Social Security system; an overhaul of the income tax code; and tort reform to mention three of the biggest. He will also most likely have at least one appointment to the US Supreme Court to help push through the Senate.
As Bill Clinton was entering his second term, he described, the most important legislative agenda items in the 1997 State of the Union address: "[P]reserve social security and reform Medicare for the long run" and enacting "campaign finance reform."
His education reform proposal was, and this is from the transcript:
"Every 8-year-old must be able to read; every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the Internet; every 18-year-old must be able to go to college; and every adult American must be able to keep on learning for a lifetime."
Marginally better than the Clinton school uniform initiative, but not by much.
A poll by the Associated Press taken on the eve of the Inauguration, shows that by 60% - 39% Americans were "hopeful" about a second Bush administration.
This is important because to listen to much of the post-election coverage you might believe that our deeply divided country has no chance of taking on large, complicated issues like Social Security or the tax code.
Moreover, the general public - now that the white-hot rhetoric of the campaign has faded from our national consciousness - likes President Bush.
According to the poll:
66 percent find the President "likeable"
65 percent find him "strong"
62 percent "intelligent" and,
57 percent "dependable"
When asked if they were "angry" about George W. Bush being President, only 21% said they were, while 79% said they were not.
So much for the national Democrats pretending there is a deep-seated antipathy toward the President across America.
An incoming President - especially a second-term President - has an enormous opportunity to set the tone. He gets to deliver his inaugural address on January 20th which is generally long on soaring phrases but short on details. A few weeks later, he gets to flesh out the elements of his legislative agenda in the State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.
President Bush has some additional advantages, in that the Democrats are in complete disarray.
Their Congressional leadership is invisible to the general public (compare and contrast Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott as Clinton entered his second term);
They are in a complete muddle over who should lead the Democratic National Committee and how far the Party should skew to the Left; and
Their natural coalitions - organized labor, African-Americans, Jewish, and Hispanic voters - are either shrinking in importance as political forces or are moving toward the GOP.
Small ball is a baseball term in which a team uses bunts, singles, stolen bases, hit-and-run plays to assemble runs one at a time. This is different than "long ball" which includes hitting a baseball about 500 feet over an outfield wall and scoring runs in bunches.
President Bush, in preparing to make major adjustments and improvements to programs and policies which are very important to every American,has set an agenda which is, very much, "long ball."
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to President Clinton's 1997 State of the Union address. The AP summary of its poll. A Mullfoto of a woman in Dallas. And a Catchy Caption of the Day.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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