The Battle Hymn Of......The Republicans

By Romesh Ratnesar

No gloating," read the e-mail that greeted euphoric Republican leaders as they sleeplessly stumbled into work last Wednesday. The command came directly from the White House, which hours earlier had pulled off the biggest presidential triumph in a midterm election in nearly a century. George W. Bush and his strategists were worried that excessive celebration by congressional Republicans could infuriate Democrats, polarize the electorate and poison the slim, precious mandate the President had at last won. And so on Wednesday, White House aides fanned out across Washington holding strategy sessions and conference calls with congressional leaders and top G.O.P. operatives. Even as they discussed what to do with their new power, Administration officials conveyed the directive Bush had handed down that morning: Don't overreact. Stay calm. No gloating.

But in private some Republicans just couldn't resist. At 2 a.m. on election night, shortly after incumbent Missouri Democrat Jean Carnahan conceded defeat, an aide to Trent Lott sneaked into his empty Capitol office and placed a bronze plaque engraved with the words MAJORITY LEADER on Lott's desk. The plaque had been stowed in the bottom drawer of the desk since the Republicans lost control of the Senate 18 months ago, when Vermont's Jim Jeffords abandoned the G.O.P., but Lott never threw it away, just in case he returned to the Senate's top job. "I just feel exhilarated about having another opportunity," he told TIME.

Even at a White House determined not to appear self-congratulatory, the sense of elation was inescapable. In the Oval Office early Wednesday, Bush surprised his senior staff by bounding in on five hours' sleep for a 7 a.m. meeting and laying out his postelection strategy. "Right off the bat he said we're going to focus on the economy and unfinished business," says an official. Bush instructed the aides--Karen Hughes, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, chief of staff Andrew Card, communications director Dan Bartlett and strategist Karl Rove--to "tone it down. Let it speak for itself." But the President was smiling. "This," he said, "is a great day."

Until last week, the presidency of George W. Bush was not so much historic as shaped by history, created out of the mold of an extraordinary election and given form by the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Despite broad support for his campaign against al-Qaeda, Bush, in the eyes of his detractors, has never fully shaken his image as a fortunate son whose approval ratings would eventually collapse under the weight of a sagging economy. Democrats figured that would be enough to at least hold their ground, but last week Bush's appeal blindsided them. After securing control of both houses of Congress and then winning unanimous approval for a new Security Council resolution against Iraq, Bush has the potential to become the most powerful American politician since Ronald Reagan.

The Republican takeover of the Senate was close to two years in the making, the strategy hammered out by Rove and various high-ranking G.O.P. activists in secret meetings held everywhere from Capitol Hill brasseries to West Virginia golf courses. By the eve of the election, G.O.P. polls projected a big turnout by Republican voters energized by Bush's full-court press: he visited 15 states in the past five days. Democratic strategists, meanwhile, underestimated his pull. "Bush's coattails were far more effective than anybody on our side thought," says a top Democratic operative. "We thought his popularity numbers were soft."

They weren't. Twenty-one out of the 23 House members and 12 of the 16 Senate candidates Bush campaigned for won their races. The results were momentous. Only three other times in the past century has a President's party gained seats in the House in an off-year election, and not since the Civil War has the President's party won back a Senate majority in a midterm contest. Bush will be the first Republican President since Dwight Eisenhower to enjoy outright majorities in the House and Senate.

Democrats could do little more than insist on their relevance. "We're not going away," Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said. "We're going to be fighting for the things we believe in." The loss of control may actually give Daschle more flexibility: sources tell TIME that as majority leader he often held his fire to guard against the defection of Georgia Democrat Zell Miller, who threatened to leave the party if Daschle came down too hard on the President. But Daschle and the rest of the party leadership have yet to lay out a compelling alternative to the President's agenda, in part because party members can't decide whether or not to fight it. Democrats in the Senate are divided over whether to support the White House's push to make its tax cuts permanent, and all but the most liberal members have gone silent on the Administration's hawkish foreign policy.

In the House, the resignation of minority leader Richard Gephardt set off a fight for the soul of the party. His probable replacement, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, is an unapologetic member of the party's liberal wing--most recently she led the fight against the President's drive for congressional authorization to strike Iraq--and a scion of a minor Democratic dynasty: her father served in Congress and as mayor of Baltimore, a job her brother also held. (Her daughter Alexandra became friendly with Bush while making Journeys with George, a documentary about his presidential campaign.) The apparent anointment of Pelosi, a dynamic fund raiser who would be the first female party leader in Congress, cheered Republican strategists, who expect her to try to revive the party by picking fights with the White House. Pelosi says she's ready for combat: "We cannot allow Republicans to pretend they share our values and then legislate against those values without consequence."

How the White House plans to act on its new mandate, though, isn't clear. Members of both parties say Bush has stockpiled all the support he needs to go to war against Saddam Hussein. "You won't hear as much complaining out of Congress about not being consulted," says a senior House Republican aide. Tuesday's election suggests that Bush has loosened the country's 50-50 deadlock--Republican candidates won 53% of all votes cast in congressional and gubernatorial races--but not by much. In his first two years, Bush kept his conservative base happy but was also known to compromise on issues like education and campaign finance. Like Eisenhower's, Bush's popularity rests heavily on his prestige as Commander in Chief rather than on deep support for his domestic policies. Even with the Senate in G.O.P. hands, Bush will still have to court Democrats if he hopes to accomplish his goals and preserve his appeal to swing voters. It's no coincidence that in his news conference last Thursday, Bush identified passage of homeland-security legislation as the top priority on his agenda and bristled at the suggestion that he takes cues from his conservative base. "I don't take cues from anybody," he said.

Bush was so confident of last Tuesday's results that he threw an election-night party at the White House's family dining room. The party was officially billed as a celebration of George and Laura Bush's 25th wedding anniversary, but the gifts had barely been presented and the roast beef served before White House staff members wheeled in a television set for the President and his guests to watch the returns. Bush instructed aides to bring in election updates as soon as they got them from the Republican National Committee. Soon after a dessert of chocolate layer cake and coconut ice cream arrived, an aide handed Bush a phone: his father was calling from Florida to tell him that Bush's brother Jeb was running well in the Governor's race. A few minutes later, the networks called the race for Jeb. "Get my brother on the phone," Bush told an aide, and grinned at his guests. "I don't want him running too much better than I did down there."

Once the food had been cleared, a few guests--including House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Representative Tom Davis, the G.O.P.'s congressional campaign chair--ducked out to get back to their war rooms. But when Lott tried to leave, Bush pulled him into a sitting room outfitted with more TV monitors and jangling phones. As the results of close Senate races came in, Bush placed congratulatory calls to Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and John Sununu in New Hampshire, handed the phone to Lott, then dialed another number. "He clearly was having fun," Lott says. After the fifth call, Lott tried to excuse himself, telling Bush he needed to go back to his office. "No, no. Stay," Bush said. "Let's see how this thing turns out."

It turned out even better than the White House had anticipated. Once Bush hit the campaign trail, Republican candidates played up their advantages on national-security issues to voters nervous about terrorism and the threat posed by Iraq. Democrats tried to focus on the economy, but the party never settled on an alternative to Bush's policies of big tax cuts and increased spending. "The most important thing was the message that we were trying to articulate," says Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the top deputy to Daschle. "It did not go any place. People were more interested in Sept. 11, the sniper and the Iraq war."

While the overall victory margin was small, the Administration prevailed in most of its high-priority races. In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss coasted to an upset win over incumbent Max Cleland, while Norm Coleman came back to defeat Walter Mondale in Minnesota. As soon as the final returns came in, Lott accelerated his plans for assuming control. Early last week he began courting Dean Barkley, the Independent appointed to serve out the last two months of the late Democrat Paul Wellstone's term. If Lott can lure Barkley to vote with the Republicans, he would effectively wrest control of the lame-duck Senate away from Daschle--before the new Congress is seated in January. "We're offering to be helpful to [Barkley] in any way we can," Lott told TIME. The White House is interested too: on Thursday Lott received a call from Cheney, who was on a hunting trip in South Dakota. Lott told Cheney he was working on Barkley. The two traded hunting stories. "Did you bag any Democrats out there?" Lott cracked.

The same day, Lott held a conference call with the 50 other Senators and Senators-elect across the country, to begin mapping out a legislative agenda. If he manages to seize control of the lame-duck session, Lott plans to push through Bush's homeland-security bill, which Democrats blocked because of the White House's refusal to extend civil servant benefits to employees of the new Department of Homeland Security. They won't try that again. Bush hammered the Senate as soft on terrorism for opposing the plan, and Democrats like Cleland were vulnerable to the charge. "The President will get what he wants on homeland security because of the political corpse of Max Cleland," says conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist.

As the minority party, Democrats are unlikely to stand in the way of Republican plans to hold floor votes on the 18 federal court nominees that have been approved by the Judiciary Committee but are awaiting confirmation by the full Senate. But fierce showdowns may still erupt over the Administration's other judicial nominees--including a possible Supreme Court pick at the end of the court's term. The White House plans to resubmit the nominations of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen, two conservative judges blocked this year by Democrats. The incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, is preparing to hold votes on three nominees whose chances the Democrats might have scuttled in the past. The only real weapon available for Senate Democrats is the filibuster, a tool rarely applied in such circumstances. But party leaders such as Reid will try to "draw the line in the sand and say we're not going to go there." Says Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy: "If there's going to be a determination to send right-wing ideologues up, that will cause a battle on the Senate floor."

While the economy failed to hurt the Administration this fall, White House officials know they can't sit still. For months Bush advisers have considered a shake-up of the President's economic team but avoided any moves that might convey the impression that the President's policies had failed. The margin of last week's victory may make Bush less skittish about such perceptions. The White House desperately wants to jump-start the economy in case a conflict with Iraq sends shudders through the global economy. Administration officials say they plan to use their Senate majority early in the new year to make elements of the President's $1.35 trillion tax-cut package permanent, push through an industry-friendly prescription-drug benefit for seniors and pass an economic-stimulus package.

Even with its newly won bipartite control, the White House doesn't command a "governing majority" in the Senate: the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Members of Congress from both parties say Bush will still have to cut deals with Democrats and ditch pet projects in order to get things done. "The President asked for the Senate, and he's got it," says Reid. "He can no longer blame us if something doesn't go right." House Republican leaders say they plan to send a raft of Bush's favorite bills, which they passed early in his term, back to the G.O.P.-controlled Senate. While popular with conservatives, some of the items on that list--a ban on partial-birth abortions and an energy package that includes drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example--remain unpalatable to the centrists who are still critical to passing big-ticket legislation. The White House is wary of sending another moderate Republican like Jeffords running to the other side of the aisle. Says a Republican lobbyist: "If they're committed to growing their power base, they must not overreach by misreading the election as a mandate for certain conservative causes."

For the Democrats, a hidden benefit of last week's defeat may be that it has forced them to take their adversary seriously. After Sept. 11, many liberals believed Bush's popularity would eventually disappear as the memory of the attacks faded, the way his father's did after the glow of the Gulf War. But the election demonstrated that this war remains immediate to many Americans, and that they still view this President as a reliable guardian of the country's resolve. "Democrats have to come to terms with just how popular the President is," says a senior Democratic aide. "They continue to view him as a lightweight and not up to the job. But that's not where the Americans are." Democrats may still be able to bring Bush down two years from now, but they can't afford to wait for him to fall. --Reported by Perry Bacon Jr., Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Viveca Novak and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr., Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Viveca Novak and Douglas Waller/Washington