Four more years

George W Bush's re-election as president of the United States says less about him (he is after all a well-known commodity) and a great deal more about what kind of country America has become. Russell Baker, the former New York Times columnist, has described Mr Bush as "a willful man of possibly dangerous simplicities".

Does that describe the US as well today? After a needless war in Iraq and the death or injury of thousands of American soldiers (and many more Iraqis), the outrages at Abu Ghraib, sophistry to justify torture as official policy, the failure to nab Osama bin Laden and violation of international law at Guantanamo Bay, not to speak of the restraints on civil liberties that have been written into domestic law, it is the "war on terror" (and not his economic record) that has won Mr Bush a re-election.

So is the US now a wilful country of possibly dangerous simplicities? Will that combination of qualities lead the world into more trouble than is warranted, in danger-spots like Iran?

Or has Mr Bush learnt his lessons in Iraq that he isn't telling yet, and will he quietly dump the neo-conservative agenda, change course and, as someone said, declare victory and "walk away very quickly"?

On the evidence so far, this is someone who will "stay the course" even if the cost mounts. What the rest of the world worries about is where exactly that course leads.

The other truth about America that has become clear after a hard-fought election is that it does have a conservative heart. Whether it is abortion or stem cell research or same sex marriages, the majority position was reflected by Mr Bush.

And the obvious irony of millions of poor or middle-class people voting for someone who (as he is caught saying in the film Fahrenheit 9/11) considers the rich his "base", is explained by the religion factor. Whether it is the "moral majority" or the "born again" Christians, Mr Bush has played the religion card to good effect in a country that was always overtly religious, and thereby won a lot of poor people's votes for a candidate with essentially a rich man's agenda.

That agenda now calls for reform of everything from pensions to medical care that will leave those at the bottom of the pyramid wondering which end of the bargain they have got.

The shocks they face can be borne if the economy does well and there are jobs going. If not, there will be more people asking questions by the time of the next election.

In his victory speech, Mr Bush made a half-hearted bow to the goal of bringing the country together. But all the indications are that he will press on with his aggressive programme to mould the US even more into a conservative ideal, starting perhaps with the composition of the Supreme Court and moving down the line to areas like environmental policy.

Some right-wing economists in the country even talk of abolishing the income tax and argue that this would be "a progressive measure". Before Mr Bush came along, the 13 presidential elections since World War II had seen Republican candidates win seven times, and Democrats six times.

Now the tally is nine to six, and the result of the shift in balance is that the economic and social and judicial rules of the game are going to be re-written more aggressively than was possible so far.