Bush managed to capture not only the winning share of electoral votes without a Floridesque fiasco (it’s unlikely the Democrats will mount any challenges of the Ohio vote count or the status of the provisional ballots), but he’s the first president since his dad (in ’88) to take a majority of the popular vote. Unlike his last term, Bush now has some kind of electoral mandate, however narrow (as of this post, he only garnered 1 point above 50%). What will he do with it?

Historically, second-term presidents tend to take a more restrained approach, as they begin to care about their legacy. Bush’s first term, however, was marked by ambitious foreign and domestic agendas that drove wedges through the electorate (as we saw last night). And Bush can now count on a decisive majority in the Senate as well as the House for support in pursuing his legislateive goals. And finally, Bush, in his acceptance announcements, has claimed that a “broad mandate” has been given to him by America, the half of it that voted for Kerry notwithstanding. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see which path Bush chooses in the next four years.

It’s unlikely that Bush will pursue a constitutional amendment on gay marriage. The current piecemeal approach of banning gay marriage on a state by state basis through ballot initiatives met with a great deal of success last night, and support for state legislative attempts to ban is also running strong. It’s unlikely that Bush would manage to summon sufficient support (2/3 of both houses of Congress, or 3/4 of state conventions) to effect a ban on gay marriage at the federal level.

Update: Nevermind.

The biggest issue on everybody’s mind right now is the Supreme Court. C.J. Rehnquist is battling thyroid cancer, and he’s not the only justice who’ll likely have to quit soon for health reasons. Part of Bush’s message was a call for restrictions on women’s rights to abortion, couched in the language “values” and “faith”. If Bush is able to nominate a sizeable chunk of new justices, it will give rise to a Court that may very well be receptive to overturning Roe v. Wade or at the very least revisiting the issues raised in it. In that case, the fate of Roe–and its effects on the Republican coalition–will be the defining narrative of Bush’s second term.