HIS DOMAIN President Bush in the Oval Office in early December
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It's easy to have a happy and loyal campaign team when everything's going fine. But for much of the spring and summer, Bush was behind in the polls, and the pundits' predictions were growing more dire. Undecided voters would break for Kerry. No President had won with an approval rating below 50% so late in the campaign. More than 60% of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track. The war was a mess. It's eternally tempting for politicians to trade away principles while campaigning and say they will reconcile things when they win. But Bush aides insist that wasn't in their playbook. "Campaign meetings I was in when the President was 8 points down felt the same as campaign meetings when the President was 8 points up," says outgoing Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. In fact, Democrats admitted to feeling some envy of the Bush team's discipline. Says former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan: "They understand that politics is a game of checkers, not chess," a steady progression in one direction across the field of play. "The quality of your plan," says Jordan, "is not as important as the quality of your execution."
Once re-elected, Bush had no time to lose. The two years he has before he's perceived as a lame duck will be the most powerful period of his presidency, given his enlarged majority in Congress and the absence of any election distractions. Bush is already the most legislatively successful President since Lyndon Johnson, according to the Congressional Quarterly; roughly 80% of the legislation he supported has passed. But his domestic goals for the second term--from Social Security reform to tax restructuring to deficit reduction--mirror in ambition the foreign policy revolution of his first. In his second term, he will need to make peace with a Congress that sees the world differently from its end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Not just Democrats but fellow Republicans as well carry some bruises from the first term, during which they feel they were treated like junior partners in everything from the fight over tax cuts to the war on terrorism.
So it was a kinder, gentler Rove who descended on the annual G.O.P. congressional retreat at the Tides Inn on the Chesapeake Bay on the last day of November. As Bush told TIME, "Taking the issue [of Social Security reform] on will require a certain amount of political courage in the legislative body." The President's victory, Rove told the delegates, proved that voters will reward candidates who show guts on a tough issue like Social Security. But it was not lost on the lawmakers that they are the ones who will face voters in the future--some in 2006--so they pushed back. "This cannot be done by sheer force," says a top Republican staff member, characterizing one lawmaker's reaction to Rove. "We are not carrying the water ourselves. If you say you have political capital, we're ready to see you place some bets with it." Many Americans are not convinced that Bush has so much capital. The TIME poll found that only 33% believe he has a mandate to change Social Security so people can invest in private accounts; just 38% say he has a mandate to change the tax code. So lawmakers are demanding a major sales-and-p.r. job by Bush and a detailed plan. They insist the President not send up vague principles and expect Congress to work out the politically dangerous details.