Inside The Bunker

One year after his re-election President Bush governs from a bunker. "We go forward with complete confidence," he proclaimed in his second inaugural address. He urged "our youngest citizens" to see the future "in the determined faces of our soldiers", to choose between "evil" and "courage". But as he listened that day, Vice-President Dick Cheney knew the election had been secured by a cover-up.

-SNIP- Bush took his 2004 win as a resounding mandate for a rightwing agenda. With each right turn, however, his popularity declined. Iraq acted as an accelerator of his fall. His nomination of Harriet Miers for the supreme court was an acknowledgement of his sharply narrowed political space. While the Republican masses supported him, the Leninist right staged a revolt. In Bush's cronyism and opportunism they saw his deviation. With the prosecutor's indictment imminent, Bush withdrew Miers. Broadly unpopular, he could not suffer a split right. His new nominee, federal judge Samuel Alito, a reliable sectarian, is a tribute to his bunker strategy.

Hostage to his failed fortune, Bush is a prisoner of the right. His administration has become its own republic of fear. Libby's trial will reveal the administration's political methods. Cheney, along with a host of others, will be called to testify. Whatever other calamities may befall Bush, their spectre harries him to the right. "Disunity, dissolution and vacillation" are hallmarks of "the path of conciliation", as Lenin wrote in What is to be Done. The vanguard on "the path of struggle" criticised for being "an exclusive group," must oppose any retreat proposed by the "opportunist rearguard". "We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire."