BUSH’S OPPORTUNITY

In New York this week, I want the president to tell us where we are in the war, how he will tackle the looming nuclear threat of Iran, and how he can pull together the centrifugal forces in chaotic Iraq. The Republicans are right: Kerry did waste some time at his convention by focusing on biography rather than his plans for the future. He had to, in some ways, after the character assassination attempts by the Bush campaign for months on end. But that leaves Bush an opening: can he offer a truly conservative domestic agenda? I mean: reform of entitlements, a U-turn on public spending, staying the course on education reform, reforming the military, simplifying the tax code. He deserves a chance to repudiate the big-government, nanny-state, sectarian legacy of his first few years and show us where his second term would leave us (and no, I don’t mean Mars). Will he expand freedom at home or continue to curtail it? Will he reveal a strategy in the war that shows he has learned the dangers of waging war unprepared and on the fly? Can he show an ability to grow into more than a deeply polarizing president, more than a man who has clearly failed to win over fully half the country at a time when unity against Jihadist terror is essential? The party of McCain and Giuliani and Schwarzenegger could do that. The party of Santorum and Dobson and DeLay obviously cannot. I fear the battle is already lost, since Bush has caved to the Santorum wing on almost every single domestic issue. But I can still hope, can’t I?