George Bush's landmark tax cuts were finally approved by both houses of the US Congress yesterday, giving the President the first major legislative triumph of his tenure. But that first Washington victory could also be his last, at least for some considerable time.Rarely has Harold Wilson's adage about the length of a week in politics seemed more true than it did last week, when an unassuming senator from a small north-eastern state brought Mr Bush's Washington honeymoon to a precipitate end and confronted him with the immediate, burning question of what to do with the rest of his political life.With Republicans losing control in the Senate, Mr Bush has before him a perilous choice. He can either move towards the political centre and broaden his base, or stick to the mainly conservative programme he has charted so far and risk taking his party into next year's Congressional elections with a legislative cupboard almost bare.Congressional Democrats see no reason for charity. Once at sixes and sevens over their loss of the White House, they are now fired up to do whatever they can to preserve what they see as the gains of the Clinton years.In the first 48 hours after Senator James Jeffords' defection, Mr Bush indicated that he would press on with his programme. "I was elected to get things done on behalf of the American people, and to work with both Republicans and Democrats, and we're doing just that," he said. He also let it be known that he had "full confidence" in his White House staff some of whom were being blamed by name for "losing" Mr Jeffords.Karen Hughes, counsellor to the President, admitted that the Republicans' loss of control of the Senate was "disappointing" and would have an impact.
"It will affect some things like the calendar, it will affect some things like probably the procedure by which our nominees are reviewed and confirmed," she said. Like Mr Bush, however, she gave no hint of any change in the President's priorities.They include, in roughly chronological order after the $1.35 trillion (£950bn) tax cuts: an education bill which decrees a vast expansion of national testing; an energy programme that concentrates on expanding domestic production; an overhaul of the military that includes a shift of focus to missile defence; and encouragement for the involvement of church-based charities in social programmes. Democrats have misgivings about all these policies, even the now watered-down education bill, because they like Mr Jeffords say it needs far more money if it is to have any effect.Some senior Republicans maintained that little had actually changed: the Senate was already precariously balanced between the two main parties. If Mr Jeffords, who has become an independent, abstains, the Democrats will have a majority of one; if he votes, with them, their majority will be two. But it is still open to Mr Bush to employ the tactics he has used from the start and to continue picking off just enough like-minded members of Congress on one issue or other to get individual bills through.That would ignore the reality, however, that in losing their senate majority, the Republicans have also lost control of the political timetable; this resides largely in Senate committees which will be chaired from now on by Democrats. Any bill or nomination that does not satisfy the chairman may never be put to a Senate vote and will produce gridlock without Republican concessions. Any sign that Mr Bush is adapting his tactics will first emerge here: if, for instance, certain public spending restraints are eased, or sections of the energy programme deemed a threat to the environment are quietly dropped.A more public sign of a shift would be for the White House to bring in from the cold politicians such as Senator John McCain and Mr Jeffords' former colleagues on the moderate wing of the Republican Party.
Mr Bush may cite his collaboration with the Democrat Edward Kennedy on the education bill as an example of his "reaching out" to the left. But this one-off alliance is rather different from the continual dialogue with the centre and with Democrats that Mr Bush appeared to promise during and after the election campaign.Some Washington observers believe the loss of the Senate may prove the same sort of hidden bonus as Bill Clinton's 1994 loss of the Senate turned out to be for him. In forcing Mr Clinton to embrace a version of the Republicans' welfare reform, it allowed him to claim the political centre and may have paved the way for his re-election two years later.At this stage, however, it is hard to gauge where the President's conservatism ends and where his pragmatism begins.. Country and Western fans have Nashville The worldwide Elvis army has Graceland But America does not serve all its musical pilgrims so well Country and Western fans have Nashville The worldwide Elvis army has Graceland But America does not serve all its musical pilgrims so well Jazz enthusiasts often leave New Orleans disappointed. And, till now, blues lovers' visits to Clarksdale, Mississippi, have left them feeling, well, extremely blue.
