Bush faces real problems in the area where his conservatism has been most nakedly exposed, the environment, where polls show only 47 per cent support, with two-thirds of voters believing him to be doing the bidding of the oil companies. Other actions are in the works. Then there's the energy plan, soon to emerge from a committee led by Dick Cheney, which is certain to stress production over conservation. And the President even appears to be heading for a row with his brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida, over proposals to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Such explicit support for business interests over those of consumers could hurt the Republicans.
People see a clean environment as part of the good life they moved to the suburbs to find.
But a longer perspective may not be so kind to the President. In three months he has antagonised allies by repudiating Kyoto, alarmed Russia by pressing ahead with plans for missile defence, cut the feet from the Korean peace process with Cold War rhetoric about the North, and re-ignited the row with China with an explicit pledge to defend Taiwan from aggression. To see the Bush conduct of the China crisis as a sign of inherent moderation is profoundly wrong, one speaker argued recently at a seminar in the Brookings Institution, a Washington policy think-tank. On the contrary, he said, moderates in the Administration may well have exhausted a lot of political capital in the exercise. With the exception of the army pay issue, each of them has proved major battlegrounds with an evenly divided Congress.