What a mess ....

I am terrible with predictions (I too expected a narrow Kerry victory). But since that has never stopped me, here is what I see as the major fallouts in immediate future of the Bush win this morning:

1) Iraq is of course going to remain a disaster. I dont see any country coming up with the additional troops necessary to give the US troops the breathing room needed to do a good job. Bush will either have to add new divisions to the existent army (unlikely) or institute a draft (also unlikely) to be able to do this with any probability of success. Even if US decides to add new divisions, the necessary approval process, recruitments and trainings will probably takes months, if not years.

This administration is likely to choose the domestically painless option of letting Iraq get Beirutized. The only remaining hope is that Allawi will prove to be a capable thug and keep Iraq relatively bottled up.

2)The $ - With the deficit as big as it is, I suspect that only the belief that the second term would be the belt tightening term has not led to a serious slide so far (and obviously thanks to the the East Asian central banks too). I find this administration fiscally reckless. The market has been brooding over that for some time now. Barring serious intervention from the European central banks, I see $ sliding against the Euro for some time.

3) Scandals - Investigative reporters will be kept busy. All the scandals that the government was struggling to keep under wraps over the last few months - the theivary in Iraq, the espionage scandals in Doug Faith's shop in the ministry of defence et al - will start leaking out. There is also no incentive to do dicey stuff to hide them any longer. The memory of these scandals will fade in 4 years.

4) Big media - The White House is gonna be brutal on the national press corp to get them to toe the line. The broadcast media will make some further moves to court the right leaning audience, but there is no chance that they would be loved back by the Fox audience.

4) Supreme court - This is the big prize. With two to three justices expected to retire over the next few years, this election will likely yield the most conservative Supreme court in a very long time. Bush is gonna get the opportunity to shape the direction of the court for the next 20 to 30 years.

6) Education - I dont know a great deal about the subject and probably should keep my mouth shut. But I do think that Bush genuinely wanted to do something constructive. I think his instincts were right, although his executions have been disastrous (like everywhere else). The empirical data from the Texas schools on which some of his policy prescriptions rested now appear tainted. Get ready for act two.

7) More Tax cuts

8) Health care - Fucked

9) Economy: - I think the over all shape of the economy is going continue to get better (so long as you dont mind the dollar bleeding) even though it is not going make us ecstatic

10) Stem cell researchers: California will pick up the best minds among those who are not moving to Europe

Daniel Drezner looks at the positive side.