Four more years!?!?! 7 high hopes and 7 big fears for Bush's second term

Reason, Feb, 2005

Vernon Smith is an economics professor at George Mason University, author of Bargaining and Market Behavior (Cambridge University Press), and 2002 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

I Fear ... Bush Will Learn the Wrong Lessons From the Election

Glenn Reynolds

"GREAT ELECTION, KID. Don't get cocky." That could be Han Solo's advice to President Bush. But it's not the advice he's getting from either the left or the right. Eager to explain away Kerry's defeat in a way that lets them feel morally superior, many on the left are saying that it was all about "moral values," particularly gay rights and abortion. Eager to expand their power in the second term, advocates for the Christian Right have been swift to agree.

Listening to them would be a big mistake for Bush. There's no question that incidents like the Janet Jackson breast episode have angered a lot of Americans who feel that the entertainment industry doesn't respect their values. And gay marriage polls badly even in the bluest of blue states. But there's little reason to believe Americans eagerly cast their votes in November in the hope that busybodies would finally start telling them what to do.

In their book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge explain how the Republican coalition could go wrong: "Too Southern, too greedy, and too contradictory." Taking the advice of advocacy groups left and right is likely to send the Bush administration in that direction. Is Karl Rove smart enough to realize that?

Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, runs the popular weblog InstaPundit.com.

I Hope ... Trade Will Be Freer

Daniel Drezner

LET'S BE BLUNT: The steel tariffs were an abomination. The increase in farm subsidies was a travesty. In Bush's first term, his administration's trade policy was hardly a paragon of virtue. But it was good enough for stalwart free trader (and Democrat) Jagdish Bhagwati to admit during an election year that between Bush and Kerry, the Republican had the more responsible trade policy.

The record reflects Bhagwati's assessment. The administration jump-started the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks in the wake of the September 11 attacks. After the debacle at Cancun, when a clash between the developing and developed world dashed any hope of progress, it was U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick who got the process back on track. And the only reason there is a WTO round at all is that President Bush fought for and (barely) won trade promotion authority, something Bill Clinton was never able to do. I haven't even mentioned the spurt of bilateral and regional flee trade agreements, including pacts with Australia and Central America.

The administration should also be praised, in true classical liberal fashion, for what it has not done. The Bush team has not taken steps to block offshore outsourcing, despite intense bipartisan pressure to halt the newest forms of trade.

And finally, remember those steel tariffs? They're gone now.