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Henrie's Recipes
Bush re-elected, appeals for unity
Giles Hewitt
Posted Thu, 04 Nov 2004
President George W. Bush won four more years in the White House and tightened his party's grip on Congress, vowing to pursue his war on terror but also to earn the trust of a country divided by a bitter election campaign.
Bush claimed victory after Democratic challenger John Kerry finally conceded the first presidential race since the devastating terror attacks three years ago. The Massachusetts senator had held out for hours in the vain hope he could pull out a miracle win in the pivotal state of Ohio.
Kerry's concession in an excruciatingly close contest averted fears of a repeat of the 2000 debacle that went to the US Supreme Court before Bush was declared the winner.
Bush won big
This year Bush won big, capturing a majority of the popular vote for the first time and spearheading a successful Republican drive to expand the party's control of both houses of Congress.
In a victory speech to cheering supporters, Bush, who built his campaign around the issue of national security, promised to prosecute the global fight against terrorism "with every resource of our national power" and with "good allies".
A new season of hope
At the same time, he reached out to the 55 million Kerry voters, speaking of a new "season of hope" and appealing for help in uniting a country polarised by months of hostile campaigning and the war in Iraq.
"I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust," Bush said. "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."
Earlier, Kerry had sounded a similar note of reconciliation as he sought to console his devastated supporters in Boston.
"Today, I hope that we can begin the healing," said Kerry, who had called Bush to concede after it became clear there was no way of overturning the president's 130 000-vote advantage in Ohio — the state the incumbent needed to pass the 270 electoral votes required for victory.
"We talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need for unity for finding the common ground, coming together," Kerry said.
Bush won the popular vote
The Republican's triumph came after eight months and a billion dollars of hostile campaigning that turned on Iraq and who could better keep the country safe.
Bush won the popular vote 51-48 percent with a 3.5 million vote margin, a sweet reversal of 2000 when he lost the nationwide tally to Democrat Al Gore but took a decisive majority of electoral votes awarded in separate state contests.
"Mandate" for conservatism
At the victory rally, Vice President Dick Cheney said the result amounted to a "mandate" for the aggressive Bush campaign agenda, that included a range of conservative social and economic policies from tax cuts to limits on stem-cell research.
"We will uphold our deepest values of family and faith," said Bush who, in his second term, could well get the opportunity to appoint conservative justices to seats that become vacant on the Supreme Court.
Exit polls cited in US newspapers showed Bush's strategy of boosting his own leadership credentials as a "war president" bore fruit among the more than 110 million Americans who cast ballots.
Eighty-five percent of those who voted for the president said they did so because of his leadership skills and ability to deal with terrorism.
Results a vindication for Bush
The Republicans also scored big in the US Congress, adding four seats to the 51 they already controlled in the 100-member Senate, and at least four to the 227 they held in the 435-member House of Representatives.
The results were vindication for Bush, who had once been written off as a political lightweight.
It also gave him a leg up on his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who lasted only one term. The younger Bush, a born-again Methodist, had sought a mandate to complete what he said was unfinished work after September 11.
The devastating attacks a few months into his term turned Bush into an avenging sheriff, spearheading a "with-me-or-against-me" drive against global terrorism that sent US troops rumbling into Afghanistan and Iraq.
"If America shows any uncertainty or any weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy," he said in his signature line on the campaign trail. "This is not going to happen on my watch."
Tough-talking style served Bush well
His tough-talking style served him well in the battle against Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran he managed to paint as a weak-kneed waffler on defence and trump in the polls on the key question of national security.
The result was a crushing blow to Kerry, who started his quest for the presidency nearly two years ago and kept it alive through a series of comebacks.
The campaign was a study in contrasting styles, temperaments and policies of the two candidates and offered a stark choice between competing visions of the country's world role and posture in an era of global terrorism.
US voters chose to give another term to Bush, a plain-talking politico willing to use pre-emptive military force to protect the country.
They rejected Kerry's more-nuanced view of the war on terror that relied on intelligence, diplomacy and economic clout as much as sheer firepower.
AFP
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