Rupert Cornwell: A dark hour for American liberalism

In the end, and contrary to every prediction, it wasn't even close. The election night that was supposed to be a cliffhanger turned into a rout of the Democrats. And the reason may be spelt out in two words: George Bush.

Blame the outcome – and inveterate Bush-haters will – on the fact that the Republicans had far more money, on the spinelessness of the Democratic leadership or on the relentless and cynical exploitation of Iraq and the war on terrorism by the White House in order to squelch discussion of other issues. There is more than a grain of truth in all these excuses. But the unalloyed, incontrovertible truth is that this was a colossal personal triumph for the President.

The most enduring image of the evening, for this particular couch potato, was that of James Carville and Paul Begala, those two gunslingers who helped plot Bill Clinton's ascent, practically tearing their hair out in frustration – but admitting that, yes, Bush had played a blinder.

The man who just two years ago won office in the most dubious circumstances is now master of the American political universe as no president has been since Ronald Reagan at his apogee in the early 1980s. He projected a message. He invested massive political capital in these mid-term elections, travelling ceaselessly, bestowing upon endangered Republicans the priceless gift of photo-ops on the steps of Air Force One.

Had Bush lost, responsibility for defeat would have been his. But the gamble succeeded magnificently. Riding the coat-tails of a popular, self-styled war President, the Republicans gained total control of Capitol Hill. Remarkably, the man without a mandate has become only the third occupant of the White House in a century to gain seats in a presidential off-year.

But this is an election whose result will reverberate not just around America but the world, from the United Nations to Jerusalem, Riyadh, Pyongyang and Baghdad. Outwardly, the talk in the Bush administration will continue to be of consultation, and of co-operation with allies. But Washington's ruthless realpolitikers, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice lobby with which Bush has aligned himself, will see Tuesday as another vindication of their approach to the world. Many a European leader will grimace at the prospect of a yet more swaggering and unilateralist America, more impatient than ever of treaties and international agreements that it sees as trammelling its power.

For all his bravado, Saddam Hussein, too, must privately be having to weigh up the likelihood that he will have to make more concessions to the UN to avoid a war that the outcome of the election has, if anything, made more likely.

However, the consequences at home will be even starker. Bush will not have matters all his own way. True, control of the Senate requires the 60 votes needed to close a debate, and in the best of hypotheses the Republicans will not have more than 52. But what Teddy Roosevelt called the bully pulpit will be mightier than ever. From now on, Democrats will have to pick their fights with this President very carefully indeed.

Thus far, Congress has only nibbled at the President's conservative agenda. It passed tax cuts of $1,300bn, to be sure, but a hostile Senate threw out parts of his energy bill and balked at his Homeland Security Bill. Now it will be gorgeing on it.

Expect a new department for homeland security – the first big new cabinet department since Harry Truman created the modern Defence Department – by Christmas. Expect a drive to lock in those tax cuts for all eternity. Mr Bush will step up the pressure for school vouchers, and jump again onto his 2000 campaign hobbyhorse of a partial privatisation of social security.

Most important of all, a raft of nominations for federal judgeships, which has been bottled up in the Senate for months, will now get swift treatment. Remember that, appearances to the contrary, this election has not broken the basic politico/cultural deadlock that exists between liberal America and conservative America.

A conservative president's most lasting legacy these days may well be his appointment of conservative judges. After all, it was a narrow conservative majority on the Supreme Court, made up of appointees going back to the Nixon era, that ended Al Gore's presidential quest. Do not be surprised if one or more of the older members of the court are nudged off it to allow the appointment of fresh blood and to project this current Republican message down the generations.

For the liberal half of America this is a dark hour indeed. But for Bush, this is a liberation – and an anointing. Politics, of course, is a funny old business, and this Bush need only look to his father to remember how a war president with 80 per cent approval ratings can crash to defeat within 18 months. But short of catastrophe in the Gulf or an economic crash, it is hard this November morning to imagine a scenario, or a Democratic candidate, to upset this President's march towards a second term.

Cast your mind back to early in the evening of 7 November 2000, when the television networks seemed to seal his fate by – wrongly, as it proved – giving Florida to Al Gore. This triumph would have been unthinkable. But, like it or not, it's happening.