THE BUSH MANDATE

In a sweeping midterm Republican victory, voters this week gave President George Bush the mandate to lead they denied him in the 2000 election. The outcome of Tuesday’s vote has the White House raising expectations for its agenda and Democrats searching yet again for a message that reaches voters.

It is unusual for the party of a president to gain congressional seats in a midterm election; no one has done it with less support in his own election. The war on terror, a consistent message of compassionate conservatism, the president’s effective campaigning in recent weeks and the Democrats’ inability to find issues to call their own combined to expand the GOP hold on the House, return the party to power in the Senate and even mitigate expected losses in the races for governor. Tuesday’s win for the GOP came with a message that appealed to a broader range of voters and with a more sophisticated campaigning style than the party’s last sweep, in ’94, suggesting a more measured, more lasting strategy for reform.

With power, of course, comes the responsibility to provide leadership. The president has been widely praised for his decisions immediately following the Sept. 11 attack; his policies on other issues – energy, environmental protection, certain judgeships – have received far less support, even within his own party. The fact that Congress has been able to pass only three of 13 budget bills is due in part to division within the GOP – the split remains after the election, only now the party cannot unite in blaming Senate Demo-crats for holding up the process.

The return of the Republican majority to the Senate expands the reach of Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Sen. Snowe will move up in seniority on the Finance and Commerce committees and could, if she chose, become chairman of the fisheries subcommittee of Commerce, an important spot given that the Magnuson Act is up for reauthorization. Sen. Collins would become chairman of the Government Affairs Committee, which has oversight of Homeland Security and its annual budget requests. As a committee chairman, she would be included in leadership meetings. Both senators gain further clout by being moderates – the narrowness of the Senate split gives the Maine delegation an opportunity to build support for issues such as prescription drugs and welfare reform changes, which GOP leaders must address in a substantial way or risk losing votes to the Democratic proposals.

Or what remains of Democratic proposals. Democrats, who have shifted rightward starting with Bill Clinton in the early ’90s, still seem surprised to find Republicans covering the same ground on issues such as Medicare, Social Security and education. The Dems accuse the GOP of stealing policy points on these issues, but the opposite is true in many cases, and if the party of Clinton hopes to see the White House again it may need to spend the next two years at town hall, where policies aren’t theories and the thought of the government helping the unfortunate is more than a campaign theme.

Meanwhile, President Bush has plenty of opportunity to make something important of his party’s victory Tuesday. Strong encouragement for Congress to approve the remaining budget bills would be a good sign of his interest in doing so.