"Lots Of Work to Do"

By WALTER SHAPIRO

The resume is now complete. That elusive last line can be typed in: George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States. For nearly a quarter-century in public life, Bush has upheld the old-line patrician virtues of duty, service, loyalty and self-effacement. These qualities served him well as he clambered up the ladder of achievement. But on a cloudy Tuesday night in November, uplifted by the votes of more than 46 million Americans, Bush was elevated onto a higher plane. The years in the shadows, the natural deference to others, the small humiliations of a perpetual office seeker are all behind him. As President, as that man at the big desk in the Oval Office, Bush will now have to articulate to what ends he plans to harness that ambition. For as , Bush said, contemplating the sober weight of his overwhelming victory, "There's lots of work to do."

The next President has always resisted definition. His career has been marked by ideological gyrations. His often tangled syntax sometimes suggests a lack of inner clarity. One of the rare glimpses of the "quiet man" beneath the political veneer came in his soaring address to the Republican Convention. But rather than continuing the process of self-definition, Bush in the fall campaign relied on angry scripts, as he launched a fusillade of demeaning attacks against the hapless Michael Dukakis. Was this red-meat rhetoric reflective of the real George Bush? On election night, Bush offered the broad hint that it was all a ruse. "When I said I want a kinder, gentler nation," he declared, "I meant it. And I mean it."

But some campaign tactics, however successful, exact a price. For Bush it was a victory without drum rolls, a majority without a meaningful mandate. The single-hued certainty of the TV tote boards left no ambiguity as to the verdict. Once again the American people had chosen a Republican President before much of the nation had even digested dinner. Yet on this 200th anniversary of the election of George Washington, there was a palpable hesitancy as America cast its votes. Rather than ratifying the Reagan realignment, a nation of ticket splitters strengthened Democratic control of Congress. The result, whether conscious or not, is certain to exacerbate the deadlock of democracy over the deficit. By producing a Republican President pledged to resisting new taxes and a Democratic Congress adamant about safeguarding Social Security and Medicare, the sad legacy of Campaign '88 appears to be another endorsement of short-term selfishness.

Democracy is an optimistic faith, and the choice of a new President cannot help inspiring a flicker of faith. The victorious Bush spoke to these dreams when he said, "A campaign is a disagreement, and disagreements divide. But an election is a decision, and decisions clear the way for harmony and peace." In an odd way, the dispiriting shallowness of the campaign had the virtue of leaving no lasting scars on the nation's psyche. Because there were no great disagreements on fundamental issues and no clashing visions of an American future, there are no deep divisions difficult to reconcile. The promise of a Bush Administration lies in the hope that the new President will soon inspire America to forget the manner in which he was elected.