New president must face a range of crises
Yesterday, when asked about the challenges, Bush merely said he was confident that he would carry the nation and lead the US for four more years. Separately, Kerry gave a more down-beat, more realistic assessment.
"I'm not pretending to anybody that it's a bed of roses. We've got some tough choices," he told supporters in Wisconsin.
So what are those tough choices that a new president will face? The most immediate is Iraq, a nightmare that America will spend years trying to wake out of.
The Bush administration has thrown its lot behind the prospect of elections in January and a hand-over of the bulk of civil administration by the end of 2005.
But already its schedule for the gradual 'normalisation' of Iraqi society looks hopelessly compromised. Its grandiose plan to recruit over 140,000 police officers seemed possible last May when 90,000 had been recruited. But since then the force has been eviscerated by the campaign of terror and intimidation waged by insurgents. Its numbers have dropped to 40,000. The new Iraqi armed forces has hardly fared better, recruiting barely 7,000 out of the 36,000 target.
And the core-deep problems of the new forces has been compounded by the acknowledgment by the US that the forces have been infiltrated by anti-American sympathisers.
The insurgents who systematically assassinated 49 National Guard recruits as they returned home from basic training a fortnight ago seemed to have detailed information on their movements. Even the US-backed prime minister Ayad Allawi accused the American military of "negligence" and argued that the US cannot rely on a police force trained to tackle civil crime to take on paramilitaries.
But that's exactly what both Kerry and Bush want to do. The president wants to train up local police forces and gradually reduce the US troop numbers, currently at 137,000. Key to that will be the launch in the next few days, irrespective of who wins, of an all-out onslaught on the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah.
Kerry wants to "accelerate" the training for Iraqi security forces to allow them replace the US. But with the piss-poor standard of training, the constant threats, the high number of infiltrators and a highly-
motivated and sophisticated guerilla movement, his plan as it's currently constituted looks like it will wilt the first time it meets the winds of reality.
Kerry's other grand plan is to go more down the multilateralist route, trying to persuade other allies and the UN to become involved in reconstruction. But it could also end up with him getting a battering in a double-pincer movement. The Germans and French are not minded to change their opposition to the war.
Kerry will get blasted by the GOP at home for abandoning America's interests in efforts to appease the allies.
But Bush sympathisers also concede that he will need to change tack.
Henry Kissinger wrote in the latest addition of Newsweek that no county can control the world, that there is a need to seek a balance of power through increasing dialogue and co-operation (a code for some form of retreat from Bush's unilateralist stance).
When it comes to domestic politics, the most pressing problem are America's burgeoning deficit and growing unemployment figures. When Clinton left the White House in January 2001, the US enjoyed a $5 trillion deficit.
That piggy bank has been emptied out, partly by the war, partly by recession and partly by a tax cut bonanza of almost $2 trillion, heavily lobsided towards the wealthiest sectors of American society. Bush wants to make those permanent. Kerry wants to reintroduce taxes for the rich. Both have focused their campaigns on the middle classes. But their plans to cut the deficits both have Grand Canyon size information gaps when it comes down to explain how exactly they will do it.
There is also a crisis looming in the Supreme Court where the Chief Justice William Rehnquist has been diagnosed with cancer. A Bush Presidency will certainly attempt to appoint Conservative replacements to the ageing court. That is a potentially explosive prospect. Supreme Courts have consistently upheld the Roe v Wade case which paved the way for abortion.
Changes in the personnel might see a partial reversal of that, allowing up to 30 states to introduce legislation banning or limiting abortion.
In tackling the jobs crisis, Bush has thrown in his lot with the belief that his tax cuts will promote growth. Kerry has promised to make it more difficult for American companies to outsource their jobs abroad.
Bush's policies on the environment have consistently favoured big business. America is the biggest consumer of fossil fuel in the world, yet he argues against any measures to reduce reliance on oil as that would affect American workers.
Kerry wants to reinstate the principle of the 'polluter pays' and to promote alternative energy sources.
IN health, education and social security, the Bush 'small government' policies envisage the privatisation of many services. "Ownership" was the buzz-word of this year's Convention. It provides that many plans and services be taking over by private companies and funds and subjected to the exigencies of the market.
Kerry's plans follow the more traditional Democratic Party route, allowing the federal Government retain its central role in those services.
Now, as in 2000, America remains deeply divided.
Kerry, speaking in Boston yesterday, promised that he would be an inclusive President who would try to bring everybody including his naysayers along. For Bush, the outcome will provide a different scenario. He will see it now, as he saw it in 2000, as a mandate to carry his unwavering agenda forward for four more years.
