THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND GEORGE W.
BUSH’S SECOND TERM
By mid-2004, with the United States facing a violent insurgency in Iraq, considerable foreign oppo- sition to the war there, and increas- ingly sharp divisions about the conflict at home, the country faced another presidential election . The Democrats nominated Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam veteran in his fourth Senate term . Kerry’s dignified demeanor and speaking skills made him a for- midable candidate . A reliable liberal on domestic issues, he was a critic of the Iraq war . Bush, renominated without opposition by the Republi- cans, portrayed himself as frank and consistent in speech and deed, a man of action willing to take all necessary steps to protect the United States .
Marked by intense feelings on both sides about the war and the cultural conflicts that increasingly defined the differences between the two major parties, the campaign re- vealed a nation nearly as divided as in 2000 . The strong emotions of the
race fueled a voter turnout 20 per- cent higher than four years earlier . Bush won a narrow victory, 51 per- cent to 48 percent with the remain- der of the vote going to Ralph Nader and other independents . The Repub- licans scored small but important gains in Congress .
George W . Bush began his sec- ond term in January 2005, facing challenges aplenty: Iraq, increasing federal budget deficits, a chronic international balance-of-payments shortfall, the escalating cost of social entitlements, and a shaky currency . None were susceptible to quick or easy solutions .
Iraq was the largest and most vis- ible problem . The country had ad- opted a new constitution and held parliamentary elections in 2005 . Saddam Hussein, tried by an Iraqi tribunal, was executed in December 2006 . All the same, American forces and the new government faced a mounting insurgency . Composed of antagonistic factions—among them Sunni supporters of Saddam and dissident Shiites aided by Iran—the insurgency could be contained, but not quelled without using harsh tac- tics that would be unacceptable at home and would alienate the Iraqi population . The constitutional Iraqi government lacked the power and stability needed to impose order, yet the costs—human and financial—of the American occupation eroded support at home .
In January 2007, the president adopted an anti-insurgency strat- egy advocated by General David Pe-
CHAPTER 15: BRIDGE TO THE 21ST CENTURY
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
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traeus—one of outreach and support for Sunni leaders willing to accept a new democratic order in Iraq, along with continued backing of the pre- dominantly Shiite government in Baghdad . He accompanied this with a “surge” of additional troops . Over the next year, the strategy appeared to calm the country . The United States began to turn over increased security responsibilities to the Iraq- is and negotiated an agreement for complete withdrawal by 2011 . None- theless, Iraq remained very unstable, its fragile peace regularly disrupted by bombings and assassinations, its Sunni-Shiite conflict complicated by Kurdish separatists . It was not clear whether a liberal-democratic nation could be created out of such chaos, but certain that the United States could not impose one if the Iraqis did not want it .
As Iraq progressed uncertainly toward stability, Afghanistan moved in the other direction . The post-Tal- iban government of Hamid Karzai proved unable to establish effective control over the historically decen- tralized country . Operating from the Pakistani tribal areas to which they had escaped in 2001, the Taliban and al-Qaida began to filter back into Afghanistan and establish signifi- cant areas of control in the southern provinces . Using remote-controlled drone aircraft equipped with guided missiles, U .S . forces staged attacks against enemy encampments and leaders within Pakistan . In 2009, the new American president, Barack Obama, approved a U .S . military
buildup and anti-insurgency effort similar to the Iraq surge . As with Iraq, the outcome remained in doubt .
As the first decade of the 21st cen- tury drew to a close, the United States found itself adjusting to a world considerably more complex than that of the Cold War . The bi- polar rivalry of that era, for all its dangers and challenges, had im- posed an unprecedented simplicity on international affairs . The newer, messier world order (or disorder) featured the rapid rise of China as a major economic force . India and Brazil were not far behind . Post-So- viet Russia re-emerged as an oil and natural gas power seeking to regain lost influence in Eastern Europe . The United States remained the pre- eminent power in the world, but was now first in a complex multipolar in- ternational system .
At home, the nation remained generally prosperous through most of the Bush years . After a weak first year, gross domestic product grew at a relatively steady, if unspectacu- lar, rate and unemployment held at fairly low levels . Yet the prosperity was fragile . Most noticeable was the rapid decline of American manufac- turing, a trend that was well along by the time George W . Bush became president and was in sharp contrast to the rise of China as an industrial power . Increasingly, the economy was sustained by consumer spending, finance, and a construction boom led by residential housing . Federal policy, reflecting the American ideal
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that every person should have an opportunity to own a home, encour- aged the extension of mortgage loans to individuals whose prospects for repayment were dim . The financial institutions in turn repackaged these loans into complex securities, repre- sented them as sound investments, and sold them to institutional inves- tors . These ultimately unsustainable investments were fueled to excess by an easy-money policy as the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve System, held interest rates at low lev- els . Similar economic currents flowed in much of the rest of the de- veloped Western world, but the Unit- ed States was the pacesetter .
In line with the theme of compas- sionate conservatism, Bush proposed a major overhaul of the Social Secu- rity system that would allow individ- uals some discretion in investing the taxes they paid into it . The plan aroused nearly unanimous Demo- cratic opposition, generated little public enthusiasm, and never got to a vote in Congress . Bush’s other major project—the enhancement
of Medicare by the addition of a vol- untary prescription drug program— proved much more popular . It ap- peased conservative qualms about big government by subsidizing qualified private insurance plans, required fairly large out-of-pocket payments from those who bought into it, but still provided real savings to elderly patients who required mul- tiple medications . Yet, as was the case with already existing Medicare provisions, the costs of the drug program were not fully covered . It added substantially to a federal defi- cit that seemed uncontrollable .
The growing deficit became a major issue among not simply oppo- sition Democrats but many Republi- can conservatives, who thought their party was spending too freely . In ad- dition, the difficult war in Iraq was increasingly unpopular . In the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans lost control of Congress to the opposition Democrats, who more than ever looked with confidence to the next presidential election . 9
CHAPTER 15: BRIDGE TO THE 21ST CENTURY
President George W. Bush walks down the White House Colonnade with his successor, Barack Obama, on November 10, 2008, six days after Obama’s election as 44th president of the United States.
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Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (Illinois) at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, September, 2008.
POLITICS OF
HOPE
16 C H A P T E R
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CHAPTER 16: POLITICS OF HOPE
“The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively
debate, but they endure when people of every background and
belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service
of a greater purpose.”
President Barack Obama, 2009