Okay, I had too much faith in markets, and I should have gone with my gut feeling.

It will be interesting to see what happens here. Last year when the Democrats controlled the senate, there were doubts about Bush's legitimacy and mandate. He will argue, justifiably, that this result removes the doubts. Before that, for Clinton's first two years of office he was a long way from many of the congressional Democrats on quite a few issues, so he found lots of congressional obstructions anyway. (His most important victories, eg NAFTA, involved lots of Republican votes). Before that, we had Bush 41 and Reagan and congressional Democrat majorities. Before that, we had Jimmy Carter. So, Bush could conceivably now be the most powerful president in 25 years. It will be interesting to see what he does with it. Certainly the Republicans will try to push their tax cut agenda further. Hopefully we can avoid more steel tarrifs and farm bills.

This is what most bothers me about Bush. He does not seem to have any natural instinct of committment to free trade. He may surprise me on this. I hope he does. But his record does not inspire me.