Ivory Coast Jets Bomb Northern Town

Ivory Coast Jets Bomb Northern Town
Thursday, November 04, 2004

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast warplanes bombed the largest city of the rebel-held north Thursday in waves of attacks, breaking a more than year-old cease-fire in the civil war that split West Africa's one-time economic powerhouse.

The government's Russian-made Sukhoi jets launched attacks at dawn and swept back in for at least two more raids by nightfall, targeting rebel military and civilian headquarters and television in surprise attacks that left civilians cowering in their homes.

"We are going to reconquer our territory and reunify Ivory Coast," Col. Philippe Mangou, a government military chief for operations, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Rebel leader Guillaume Soro, reached after the first attack, called the government offensive a "unilateral ... flagrant violation" of Ivory Coast's peace deals and complained about the inaction of the 10,000 foreign peacekeepers in the country. The rebel chief headed back to Bouake from nearby Togo, where he had gone for regional consultations on the deteriorating situation in his home country.

"We've just been bombed. The war has started again," rebel military commander Cherif Ousmane told the AP, after the first raid jolted residents awake.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has been split since a September 2002 coup attempt launched the country into civil war. A 2003 peace deal, brokered under pressure from former colonial ruler France and others, ended major fighting. But a power-sharing deal failed to take hold, and distrust and ethnic, regional and political hatreds continue to run strong.

The civil war killed thousands and forced more than 1 million people from their homes. Renewed war would threaten stability in the entire region if it draws in arms and idled fighters from neighboring countries — Liberia and Sierra Leone — themselves recovering from 1990s civil wars.

In New York, U.S. deputy U.N. ambassador Stuart Holliday called the situation "very grave" and said Security Council diplomats would look for ways to stop the attacks.

Two jets launched the first raid around sunrise, targeting a rebel battalion headquarters within Bouake. An AP reporter in Bouake saw the aircraft fly in low over the town. A boom followed, and a plume of black smoke rose.

Soro said the first attack seriously injured 25 civilians, but said nothing about casualties among rebels.

Rebels deployed in force across Bouake. Insurgents, faces covered by hoods, erected checkpoints. Frightened civilians stayed inside, with shops closed.

The two warplanes returned at midday and again at midafternoon, dropping fresh bombs.

The third raid targeted rebel headquarters and the antennas of the rebels' television station, said Francois Guenon, spokesman for the French Embassy in Abidjan.

There was no immediate word on casualties from the subsequent raids. Phone service in Bouake appeared to be out by midday.

Government warplanes flew low over a second rebel town, Korhogo, at nightfall, as rebels below manned an anti-aircraft gun.

In Abidjan, the government-held commercial capital in the loyalist south, about 3,000 people marched on army headquarters, demanding a full-scale offensive to retake the north.

"I can tell you that as I speak, the sun has risen for you and set for the others. Stand up, with everyone behind us, and let us liberate the country," Army chief of staff Gen. Matthias Doue assured the crowd.

Mobs stormed offices of opposition newspapers, burning one, and gathered outside French military headquarters, calling on Paris to stay out of any renewed offensive by loyalist forces. Government helicopter gunships patrolled the air.

Broadcasts from international news services went off the air in Abidjan by afternoon, apparently blocked by the government.

About 6,000 U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed along with 4,000 French troops, jointly patrolling the front lines that divide the nation in two.

Col. Henry Aussavy, a spokesman for French peacekeepers, repeatedly refused comments on any response by the international troops.

Ivory Coast had stood as West Africa's single-most stable and prosperous country for decades, welcoming in millions of mostly Muslim immigrants from neighboring northern countries. Tensions between fervent loyalists of the south and the northerners grew in the 1990s amid falls in crucial commodity prices and political change, and a 1999 coup — Ivory Coast's first — ended the country's reputation for stability.

Text of President Bush's News Conference

Text of President Bush's News Conference
By The Associated Press

A text of President Bush's news conference at the White House on Thursday, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks, Inc.:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you all. Please be seated.

Yesterday I pledged to reach out to the whole nation, and today I'm proving that I'm willing to reach out to everybody by including the White House press corps.

This week the voters of America set the direction of our nation for the next four years. I'm honored by the support of my fellow citizens, and I'm ready for the job.

We are fighting a continuing war on terror. And every American has a stake in the outcome of this war: Republicans, Democrats and independents all over our country. And together we'll protect the American people.

We'll persevere until the enemy is defeated. We'll stay strong and resolute. We have a duty, a solemn duty, to protect the American people, and we will. Every civilized country also has a stake in the outcome of this war.

Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy. And we have common duties: to protect our peoples, to confront disease and hunger and poverty in troubled regions of the world.

I'll continue to reach out to our friends and allies, our partners in the EU and NATO, to promote development and progress, to defeat the terrorists and to encourage freedom and democracy as alternatives to tyranny and terror.

I also look forward to working with the present Congress and the new Congress that will arrive in January.

I congratulate the men and women who have just been elected to the House and the Senate. I will join with old friends and new friends to make progress for all Americans.

Congress will return later this month to finish this current session. I urge members to pass the appropriations bill that remain, showing spending discipline while focusing on our nation's priorities.

Our government also needs the very best intelligence, especially in a time of war. So I urge the Congress to pass an effective intelligence reform bill that I can sign into law.

The new Congress that begins its work next year will have serious responsibilities and historic opportunities.

To accelerate the momentum of this economy and to keep creating jobs, we must take practical measures to help our job creators, the entrepreneurs and the small-business owners.

We must confront the frivolous lawsuits that are driving up the cost of health care and hurting doctors and patients. We must continue the work of education reform to bring high standards and accountability, not just to our elementary and secondary schools, but to our high schools as well.

We must reform our complicated and outdated tax code. We need to get rid of the needless paperwork that makes our economy — that is a drag on our economy, to make sure our economy is the most competitive in the world.

We must show our leadership by strengthening Social Security for our children and our grandchildren.

This is more than a problem to be solved. It is an opportunity to help millions of our fellow citizens find security and independence that come from owning something — from ownership.

In the election of 2004, large issues were set before our country. They were discussed every day on the campaign.

The campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals. And I'm eager to start the work ahead.

I'm looking forward to serving this country for four more years.

I want to thank you all for your hard work in the campaign. I told you that the other day and you probably thought I was just seeking votes.

But now that you voted, I really meant it. I appreciate the hard work of the press corps. We all put in long hours and you were away from your families for a long period of time. But the country is better off when we have a vigorous and free press covering our elections. And thanks for your work.

With that overpandering, I'll answer a few questions. Hunt?

QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. As you look at your second term, how much is the war in Iraq going to cost? Do you intend to send more troops or bring troops home? And in the Middle East more broadly, do you agree with Tony Blair that revitalizing the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political issue facing the world?

BUSH: Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three questions.

Start with Tony Blair's comments.

I agree with him that the Middle East peace is a very part of a peaceful world. I have been working on Middle Eastern peace ever since I've been the president. I laid down a very hopeful strategy in June of 2002, and my hope is that we'll make good progress.

I think it's very important for our friends the Israelis to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. It's very important for the Palestinian people to have a peaceful, hopeful future. That's why I articulated a two-state vision in that Rose Garden speech. I meant it when I said it. And I mean it now.

What was the other part of your question?

QUESTION: Iraq?

BUSH: Oh, Iraq, yes. Listen, we will work with the Allawi government to achieve our objective, which is elections. And we're on the path to stability. And we'll continue to train the troops. Our commanders will have that which they need to complete their missions.

And in terms of the costs, we'll work with the OMB and the Defense Department to bring forth to Congress a realistic assessment of what the cost will be.

Happy Birthday, Laura Bush!

Wishing you every joy and happiness... today and always!



It's my birthday, today, too!

Sending shared birthday greetings along to:
Famous Birthdays for November 4
CNSNews.com Features
Legendary newscaster Walter Cronkite, born 1916.
Academy Award and Emmy-winning actor Art Carney, born 1918.
Brewery executive Alfred Heineken, born 1923.
Emmy Award-winning actress Doris Roberts, born 1929.
Emmy Award-winning actress Loretta Swit, born 1937.
Actress Markie Post, born 1950.
New age musician Yanni, born 1954.
Jazz musician Najee, born 1957.
Actor Ralph Macchio, born 1961.
TV personality Jeff Probst, born 1962.
Actress Kathy Griffin, born 1964.
Actor Matthew McConaughey, born 1969.
Rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, born 1969.
Industrialist Benjamin F. Goodrich, born 1841.
Actor, humorist Will Rogers, born 1879.
39th Vice President, Spiro Theodore Agnew, born 1918.
Actor Cameron Mitchell, born 1918.
Photographer Robert Maplethorpe, born 1946.

And from The History Channel:
General Interest
1842 Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd
1922 Entrance to King Tut's tomb discovered
1979 Iranians Storm US Embassy in Tehran
1995 Yitzhak Rabin assassinated

Automotive
1939 The First Air-Conditioned Car
1965 Mrs. Breedlove Breaks 300MPH Barrier

Civil War
1862 : Democrats gain seats in elections
1864 : Battle of Johnsonville, Tennessee

Cold War
1956 Soviets crush Hungarian revolt

Crime
1928 One of New York's most notorious gamblers, Arnold Rothstein, is shot to death

Entertainment
1879 Will Rogers born
1960 Filming complete on The Misfits

Literary
1948 T.S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize in literature

Old West
1879 Will Rogers is born in Oklahoma

VietNam War
1969 South Vietnamese battle communists along the Cambodian border
1970 U.S. hands over air base to the Vietnamese Air Force

Wall Street
1880 James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio, invented the very first cash register.
1939 President Franklin Roosevelt implements the Neutrality Act of 1939.
1953 Hollywood releases the immortal Marilyn Monroe comedy How to Marry a Millionaire

World War II
1944 Gen. Sir John Dill dies

And from Life.com


And from TV Guide:


This was fun taking a look back.

I Tried To Tell You . . .

I Tried To Tell You . . .
Published on: 11/04/04

America's faith in freedom has been reaffirmed. With the re-election of President Bush, America recommitted itself once again to expanding freedom and promoting liberty. Only the 1864 re-election of Abraham Lincoln, the 1944 re-election of Franklin Roosevelt and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan rival this victory as milestones in the preservation of our security by the advancement of freedom.

This election validated not just freedom, but also the faith our Founding Fathers placed in average folks to navigate the course of this great nation. By weighing the greatest issues at the gravest times and choosing our path, ordinary people have again accomplished extraordinary things. With courage and caution, rather than fear and timidity, the voters chose a path to ensure others would enjoy the same freedom to set their own path.

This election outcome should have been implausible, if not impossible. With a litany of complaints — bad economy, bad deficit, bad foreign war, bad gas prices — amplified by a national media that discarded any pretense of neutrality, a national opposition party should have won this election.

But the Democratic Party is no longer a national party. As difficult as the challenges are — both real and fabricated — Democrats offered no solution that was either believable or acceptable to vast regions of America.

Tax increases to grow the economy are not a solution that is believable or acceptable. Democratic promises of fiscal responsibility are unbelievable in the face of massive new spending promises. A foreign policy based on the strength of "allies" such as France is unacceptable. A strong national defense policy is just not believable coming from a candidate who built a career as an anti-war veteran, an anti-military candidate and an anti-action senator.

Democratic Party policies haven't sold in large sections of America in decades, and the only success of Democrats in presidential elections for 40 years was when they pitched themselves as pro-growth, low-tax, strong-defense, fiscally responsible, values-oriented candidates.

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton hummed the tune but never really sang the song, and that's why Democrat prospects have gone south in the South. In 1980, the South had 20 Democrats and just six Republicans in the Senate. As recently as 1994, the Senate had 17 Democrats and nine Republicans from the South.

A decade later, the number had reversed to 17 Republicans and nine Democrats. With this election, it is 22 Republicans and just four Democrats from the South.

When will national Democrats sober up and admit that that dog won't hunt? Secular socialism, heavy taxes, big spending, weak defense, limitless lawsuits and heavy regulation — that pack of beagles hasn't caught a rabbit in the South or Midwest in years.

The most recent failed nominee for president stands as proof that the national Democratic Party will continue to dwindle. The South has gone from just one-fourth of the Electoral College in 1960 to almost a third today.

To put this in perspective, that gain is equal to all the electoral votes in Ohio. Yet there was not a single Southern state where John Kerry had any real chance. Would anyone like to place bets on the electoral strength of the South by 2012? Maybe they should tax stupidity.

When you write off centrist and conservative policies that reflect the will of people in the South and Midwest, you write off the South and Midwest. Democrats have never learned from the second or third or fifth kick of a mule. They continue to change only the makeup on, rather than makeup of, the Democrat Party.

And so we have a realignment election. For the first time, in an "us vs. them" election and in the toughest of situations, Republicans have been re-elected to the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Confronting an opposition that can win a divided electorate in the worst of times and that has a growing electoral base, the national Democratic Party has a choice: continue down this path toward irrelevance or reverse course. As the last Truman Democrat, I hope my party makes the right choice but know I will not be allowed to be part of it. Such is the price you pay when you love your nation more than your party.

And so while I retire with little hope for the near-term viability of the party I've spent my life building, I retire with a quiet satisfaction that after witnessing the struggle of democracy over communism and fascism, the fear I once held that America might not rise to meet this new challenge of terrorism has vanished like a fog under the radiance of a new dawn. While the threat is still real, the shadow looming across a promising future is gone.

And the credit for that goes to one man. Like the last lion of England, Winston Churchill, George W. Bush has stood alone and risked all to give the world a new, clearer path to the advancement of freedom.

Abraham Lincoln, in his second annual message to Congress, stated: "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom for the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth."

George Bush has injected into a region of enslavement an incurable dose of freedom, and thus nobly saved that "last, best hope of earth" — free men.

— Zell Miller is Georgia's Democratic U.S. senator.

Who's to Blame? You Are

Who's to Blame? You Are
Thursday, November 04, 2004
By John Gibson

You might have seen a sampling of the worst of European headlines reacting to the Bush victory.

"Four More Years" became an indictment for the United Kingdom's The Independent.

And the Daily Mirror in London — so anti-war that it would chew its own leg off before admitting it was good that Saddam was gone — asked how 59 million Americans could "be so dumb?"

The Daily Mirror also called Bush the "yellow rogue of Texas," and a "gibbon" — which is a monkey, as for as insults go.

The Guardian ran a headline, "Great Vote, Grisly Result."

Great Vote, Grisly Result
A Moving Demonstration of Democracy Brings the Prospect of a More Divided World
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday November 4, 2004
The Guardian

Never in the course of human history has such an inspiring election produced such a depressing result. "It's South Africa!" was my first thought, when I saw the endless queues of voters lining up across the country first thing in the morning, as they did in South Africa's first democratic election.

In one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Washington, just 15 minutes' drive from the White House yet reminding me strongly of Soweto, dreadlocked T'Chaka Sapp stood in front of the Ketcham Elementary School polling station accosting voters: "How're you doin', brother? ANC - I'm first on the list!"

Here ANC is short for Advisory Neighbourhood Commissioner, not African National Congress, but his adopted first name is, he told me, of Zulu origin. And all down Good Hope Road there was a furious hope of throwing out a hated regime.

"Vote or Die" proclaimed the T-shirt promoted by hip-hop's Sean "P Diddy" Combs and worn outside another polling station by 14-year-old Sareena Brown. What did it mean? I asked. "If you vote Bush, he's going to get us killed." And she means it literally, because it's the brothers of these poor black kids who are signed up in the recruiting station down the road to fight in Iraq.

"There were no weapons of mass destruction," said T'Chaka Sapp, "and it's our kids who are dying." And everyone here feels they are paying the price of Bush's policies in lost jobs and a faltering economy.

Everywhere I went "east of the river" - the Anacostia river, that is - in this impoverished, crime-ridden urban sprawl, originally settled by freed slaves, where I saw no other white face for hours on end, I heard the same energising story. Even before the polling stations opened, the voters were standing in line. Already by noon, the automatic ballot counting machines were showing record numbers on their digital counters. I met young people recently out of prison who would never have dreamed of voting, but were mobilised by P Diddy and some vague sense that the fate of the world would depend on it. Which, arguably, it does.

However, it was not just what another local activist called "the forgotten people" across the Benning road bridge who rocked the vote. Everywhere across the country, from sea to shining sea, they turned out in unprecendented numbers. For all the corrupting role of big money, the meddling by lawyers and the distorting effects of biased media, this was an overwhelming, heartlifting expression of the popular will. Here was one of those elemental moments, as in South Africa, as in Poland in 1989, as in Afghanistan a few weeks ago, when the great, tempestuous river of democracy breaks through all the barriers erected in its way. Yet with what a horrible result! I spent much of November 2 - a beautiful Indian summer's day in Washington - in the sunny conviction that the high turnout, including many new voters, was good news for Kerry. Why turn out for the first time unless you wanted a change? Many Democrats and, I gather, many back home in Europe shared this conviction. We were all wrong. For people were just as passionate on the other side. A decisive majority of American voters - a counted 58.5 million to about 55 million as this article goes to press - backed Bush rather than Kerry.

In the next few days, we'll learn more from the pollsters about exactly why. But here are two reasons that I learned east of the river from Mrs Ida Boyd, a spry grandmother ("I've been black for 84 years") going in to vote at the Benning library polling station. She was voting, she told my shocked companion, for Bush. "At least with this man you know he's a nut!" The others pretend they're not. She added: "I love Clinton. He looks so sexy " - and she swung her 84-year old hips with amazing grace. "But I wouldn't vote for him." His morals, you see.

So, in spite of everything, even in spite of his being "a nut", people felt they knew where they stood with the folksy Bush, which they didn't with "flip-flop" Kerry. And they never warmed to Kerry, as they did to Clinton. "The lesser of the two evils - your mama told you that!" I heard ANC candidate Anthony Rivera shout to a clutch of young voters in another precinct. That summed up exactly the spirit in which so many voted for the lofty Boston brahmin.

Second, there was the gut reaction of so many American voters, like Ida Blair, to put moral, cultural and lifestyle choices before anything else, including their own economic self-interest. Family values. No gay marriage or abortion. Gun ownership. God, motherhood and apple pie. I just heard on the television that married women voted overwhelmingly for Bush, single women for Kerry.

Many Europeans will conclude from this result that George Bush is the true face of America. That would be a huge mistake. In fact, this election has shown that America is more divided than ever over essentials of politics and faith. It's one country, but two nations. On the map, it's the blue states of the west and north-east coasts against the red (meaning, confusingly to a European eye, conservative) states of the centre and south. In real life, it's at least 50 million individual American voters who have values and attitudes often very similar to ours, and just slightly more Americans who have different, or, at the evangelical edge, alien ones.

Bush can see he must try to reunite this divided nation, as he promised already at his first inauguration in 2000. Perhaps, like Margaret Thatcher after her election in 1979, we'll hear him quoting St Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, let me bring harmony ..." But it will be as hard for him as it was for her. It's not easy for the problem to be the solution.

He may also hold out a small olive branch to alienated Europeans. Back in the imperial leafiness of central Washington, that's exactly what senior officials in the Bush administration tell me he will offer early next year. If he does, there'll be a great temptation to refuse it, particularly if the olive branch is small and strangely equipped with thorns.

The potential sources of further transatlantic discord, from Iraq to Iran to China, are legion. Realistically, the chances of a divided America causing more divisions in the west and the world are much higher now than they looked, briefly, in the hopeful sunlight of Tuesday morning.

Yet in our own enlightened self-interest, and that of the world, we should - though the glass of wine politely raised at a diplomatic reception will taste of bitterest bile - try to respond in kind. This is not just for ourselves, and our own vital interests. It's also a matter of keeping faith with the other America: the half, or very nearly half, who think like us. And keeping faith, too, with Sareena Brown and the other "forgotten people" you meet across the river, in the American capital's own version of Soweto. They, even more than we, need and deserve a better president - and in four years' time, I believe they'll get one. (www.freeworldweb.net)

The sober and restrained Financial Times headlined one column, "Sentenced to Four More Years."

Sentenced to Four More Years
Quentin Peel / London November 06, 2004

With some obvious exceptions, other nations feel that with Bush as US president the world is a more dangerous place.

George W Bush’s victory over John Kerry is not the result the world wanted. The Democratic challenger was much the most popular US presidential candidate in nearly every country bar the US. But foreigners do not have votes. For a majority of American voters, the incumbent president was the man who made them feel safer in a world threatened by global terrorism after the events of September 11 2001.

With some obvious exceptions, notably Israel and Russia, most other nations feel the opposite: that with Bush as US president, the world is a more dangerous place. In Europe and Asia, Africa and Latin America, they believe the US-led war in Iraq has further destabilised the volatile Middle East. They see their economies threatened by the resulting rise in energy prices. They fear that the United Nations, overwhelmingly trusted as the best available institution for peacekeeping and conflict-resolution, has been undermined by America’s unilateralism. They mistrust the US inclination to pre-emptive military action.

Such views were apparently not shared by a majority of US voters when they went to the polls on Tuesday, although the country remains deeply divided. Bush and his team will see that as a vindication of their muscular prosecution of the so-called “war on terror”, lumping it together with the invasion of Iraq. The president’s absolute self-belief, and his dedication to the fight of “good” against “evil”, motivated a solid constituency of conservatives and religious evangelists in his support.

Bush’s victory presents a great dilemma for the outside world, including many of America’s traditional allies. The Bush administration’s ideological unilateralism has split Europe and widened the transatlantic divide. It was not just the ill-judged invasion of Iraq but also the underlying conviction that “coalitions of the willing” were to be preferred to the Nato alliance. Bush and his neo-conservative advisers seem hell-bent on reworking the international order that has kept the peace more or less successfully since the second world war.

Many of the European nations that have contributed to the “coalition forces” in Iraq have done so because they feel they must stick close to the superpower come what may, and not out of conviction that its policies are right. Other friendly countries, such as Turkey and India, were appalled at the invasion. “It is very sad. They wanted an international coalition against Iraq, and they ended up by getting virtually an international alliance against America,” says Jaswant Singh, India’s former foreign minister. “I do hope they have learnt an extremely costly but very necessary lesson.”

There was no sign of that from Mr Bush on the campaign trail. Yet the danger of a descent into chaos in Iraq will greatly raise the pressure for dissenters, such as France and Germany, to get involved. Both have repeatedly rejected the idea of sending soldiers there but neither wants to see a failed state emerge. Whatever they may think in Washington, neither Paris nor Berlin wants to see the US humiliated. They need to work out a new modus vivendi.

Iran follows hard on Iraq’s heels as a potential source of friction between Bush and his allies. The European Union (including members of the Iraqi coalition, such as the UK and Italy), Russia and India all believe that a policy of carrot and stick is needed to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. They recognise that the country has genuine security concerns in a region where both Israel and Pakistan already have nuclear weapons, while neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan are profoundly unstable. They fear that a powerful lobby of hawks in Washington might persuade the re-elected president to launch missile strikes against presumed nuclear facilities in Iran, ending any hopes of peaceful reconciliation.

There are hopes, not least in London, that a Bush-2 administration will be altogether more heedful of international concerns, just as the second term of Ronald Reagan produced a more sensitive foreign policy. Yet the opposite could well be true. Bush’s electoral success was gained on an unashamedly hawkish policy platform. Colin Powell, his most moderate adviser, seems certain to quit as secretary of state at the end of the year. His successor is unlikely to be so sensitive to international alarm.

The more positive view is that two perceptions may finally percolate through to the White House. One is that dividing America into fiercely partisan camps may help re-election but it will not help in the history books. The other is that Iraq will never be stabilised without a far broader coalition, to give any future regime the legitimacy US occupation forces so clearly fail to provide.

A triumphant Bush may not be inclined to hear such messages. But there is another view gaining credence in an increasingly despairing international community: that only after another four years of muddle and mistakes by an ideologically driven administration will enough people realise that even the sole superpower cannot remain deaf to its allies forever. Only then will the lesson be learnt. It may be a very expensive price to pay.

In fact, the Financial Times' Amity Shlaes, an American writing from New York, informed her readers in the U.K. and Europe that Bush's victory undermined a common notion that Euros hold about the U.S.: "the American right is essentially marginal and contemptible."

The Rise of a More Conservative America
By Amity Shlaes
Published: November 4 2004 02:00 | Last updated: November 4 2004 02:00

The outcome of the US election may look similar to that of 2000. But in reality, 2004 is fundamentally different.

The lessons of 2000 involved process - ballots, campaign finance, judicial rulings. The lessons of the 2004 election involve policy - or, to put it more precisely, the unpredicted victory of Republican and conservative policy. This victory has undermined some of the assumptions about the country that dominated election year, including the idea that the American right is essentially marginal and contemptible. And it is a victory that has been won on three fronts - foreign policy, social policy and economics.

Start with the breadth of the result. Mr Bush collected millions more votes than his opponent. He won more votes even than Ronald Reagan, until now the biggest vote-getter in presidential history. The Grand Old Party locked in its control of the House of Representatives, picking up seats in the south as old Democrats retired. Republicans also gained crucial seats in the Senate, defenestrating Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the minority leader. Those Democrats who did win office often did so with relatively conservative messages. And both Democratic and Republican voters backed numerous Republican or conservative ballot initiatives.

On foreign policy, the result tells us that Americans, like Europeans, are concerned about the world and America's actions in it. But that concern does not translate into the sort of large-scale doubt about Mr Bush's leadership that observers had predicted. It is obvious but still must be said: voters would not have turned out in record numbers for Mr Bush if they had thought his efforts to foster democracy in the Middle East were insane. And they would not have voted for him if they had thought he was the principal source of global instability. In the weekend before the election, American television aired two taped threats from al-Qaeda, one delivered by Osama bin Laden himself. The general expectation was that citizens might react as the Spaniards did to the terrorist attacks just before their election - by heading left. But, as in last month's Australian election, there was no backlash (Tony Blair, who is considering the timing of a British election, might take note). Instead, voters rallied around Mr Bush.

What about social policy? Many observers had suggested over the course of the year that conservative social values were not merely wrong but were also - perhaps fatally - passé or limited to the Christian right. Recently the New York Times published an 8,000-word article built around the thesis that the gay family had come of age and that the country was ready to formalise acceptance of gay families through legal structures.

On Tuesday, however, the electorate rejected that notion, voting, in all the states that took up the question of gay marriage, to ban or outlaw it. The states concerned were not all rural backwaters - one was oh-so-middle-of-the-road Ohio. This outcome leaves those who had assumed that a national shift to the left was taking place looking "coastal" and isolated themselves.

On race, conservatives and their ideas did well. Take Barack Obama, the Democrats' candidate for the Illinois Senate seat. Mr Obama, who is black, trounced his opponent not with the traditional Democratic line on race (colour and ethnicity matter a lot) but with a centrist or even Republican message: America must be "one nation", colour blind.

Finally, there is economic policy. Throughout the campaign, economic woes were emphasised: the pressures of globalisation, the uncertainty of a shift from an industrial to a service economy, and the attendant job losses. These are bitter problems. Still, by supporting Mr Bush, voters acknowledged that he had got many fundamentals right. After all, "four more years" sounds a good idea if it means an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent and annual growth of 3.7 per cent.

More intriguingly, voters made clear their position on how such results were achieved. Republican culture has a side that abhors government debt. But Republicans did not slay Mr Bush for his failure to veto big spending projects. Nor did they shy away from him because he talked of reforming Social Security, America's pension system. And they endorsed his focus on making the economy relatively competitive by cutting taxes and taking other supply-side steps. In North Carolina, home state of John Edwards, the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate, voters handed a Senate seat to Richard Burr, a tax-hating Republican who defeated Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's thoughtful and much-admired former chief of staff. Commentators repeatedly remarked on their surprise that Louisiana had voted in David Vitter, its first Republican senator since the civil war. But what is genuinely notable about Mr Vitter's victory is that he is likely to strengthen the southern tradition of tax cutting.

Before they voted for Mr Bush on these issues, many Americans had already voted with their feet. In the 1990s and since then, the population of the US has migrated to low tax, small government, socially conservative states. Because their populations are growing, red states are getting more electoral college votes. All this meant that Mr Bush could win the same states in 2004 as he did in 2000, yet collect more electoral college votes.

This is not to say that the US will not shift left again. The point is that the general surprise at the extent of Republican success is important: the America that decided this election is one many of us overlooked - and one worth getting to know better. amity.shlaes@ft.com

Contemptible? Ms. Shlaes is right: That is how they think about the "red state" people over there: So wrong they are contemptible.

Consequently the horror of the Kerry loss is simply devastating. Here these nice Brits and Euros have been earnestly lecturing Americans and the Americans refused to listen.

Don't they see their president is a dope?

Don't they see he is a war-mongering thug who has to go?

Don't they see how he stubbornly and stupidly won't go along with very good ideas hatched by the Euros, like the global warming treaty?

It's one thing to have to endure Bush, but 60 million other Americans just like him? It's just too much.

My friend Peter Roff at United Press International sent out a little story Thursday about the county in Ohio that The Guardian newspaper targeted with earnest letters from Brits explaining to poor, thick Americans in a backwater like Ohio why Bush should be sent to Crawford.

Guess what? That Ohio county went for Bush.

You know what this means? The Brits and Euros are through blaming Bush. Now, it's your fault! You re-elected him, stupid.

That summer vacation in Orlando is looking better, isn't it?

That's My Word.

Memo to Hillary

Memo to Hillary
By: Bill O'Reilly
Thursday, Nov 04, 2004

Many readers will not believe this, but I am trying to look out for Senator Hillary Clinton. She's a fellow American who badly wants to be President, but based upon the vote a few days ago, Britney Spears has a better chance than Hillary of achieving that. Unless, of course, Mrs. Clinton follows my advice.

John Kerry lost the election because he did three major things wrong: first, he refused to allow Americans to get to know him. He was the soundbite king, but who the heck is this guy? Dr. Phil couldn't even get Kerry to open up. The folks couldn't get a handle on the Senator.

Secondly, Kerry did not have an alternative plan to counter the chaos in Iraq. You could go to his website all day long but there was little he was going to do differently than President Bush. And Americans don't want to go to anybody's website to get answers to questions. They want you to look them in the eye and tell them what you're going to do. Kerry didn't do that.

And third, John Kerry's progressive pals in the media killed him. Most Americans don't want arrogant movie stars and partisan fanatics ramming stuff down their throats. I understand that talk radio is the epicenter for that, but you choose to dial those programs up. When newspapers and entertainment shows begin unfair attacks on any American, there is always a backlash.

So Hillary Clinton would be wise to think about the above. Right now she is perceived as being even further left than Kerry. She has lots of pals in Hollywood, and the progressive media loves her. She rarely gives interviews to journalists who will ask tough questions, and few know what makes her tick.

That's John Kerry's recipe, and it's a loser. I thought that John Edwards would be competition for Hillary in the 2008 democratic primaries, but the Kerry campaign put him into the witness protection program, and he all but disappeared during the campaign. Edwards has brains and talent, but his luster has been diminished big time. It's Hillary's nomination to lose.

But lose she will if she continues running as a secular progressive. It should be obvious to everyone short of the Dixie Chicks that Americans want to maintain a traditional society based on Judeo-Christian philosophy. This time around, eleven states voted on gay marriage, and eleven states rejected it. And even multiple reruns of "Will & Grace" isn't going to change that situation.

So here's my advice to Hillary Clinton: morph into a modern version of June Cleaver. You don't have to wear a dress everyday and be deferential to your husband, but you do have to show Americans that you could live on their block without Secret Service agents keeping everyone fifty yards away. You have to demonstrate some kind of rapport with the folks. Right now, millions of Americans think you played a primary role in "Rosemary's Baby." You're a devil to those on the right, and in traditional precincts, you are distrusted and sometimes loathed. You must change that.

Pandering to your left-wing base is not going to cut it anymore. The progressive left has become detached from working America. Ralph Nader got nine votes, okay? Traditional values and a respect for normalcy is the prevailing wisdom during a time of terrorism.

Frankly, I don't know if Hillary Clinton can pull this off, because I simply don't know anything about her, even though I read her book. She remains guarded and remote, a woman of intellect--but not of definition. Exactly what does Hilary Clinton stand for, besides massive government entitlements? I don't know, and you probably don't either.

So reruns of "Leave It to Beaver" should be on the Clinton TV screen, in both Georgetown and Chappaqua. The Senator should spend some time at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. She should dish at Dunkin Donuts and Wendy's, ride a bike once in a while, and maybe even vacation in Florida. Americans generally like their leaders to have something in common with them. John Kerry did not. George W. Bush did. Hillary, I'm looking out for you. Get the "Everybody Loves Raymond" makeover. Right now.