One hundred days in office and what does George Bush have to show for it?
 It is a sorry record for America.

 Special report: George Bush's America

 Jonathan Freedland
 Wednesday April 25, 2001
 The Guardian

 Is this real life or is it cruel satire?
 The scene is the Oval Office. The time is early April 2001. The United States and China
 are locked in a stand-off with 24 American aircrew held captive, their spy plane
 downed. Behind the desk is President George W Bush, grilling his aides on this
 complex diplomatic confrontation. Just as John F Kennedy interrogated his advisers
 during the Cuban missile crisis, so it falls to Bush to put the single question that
 might get to the heart of this superpower showdown.

 So what does Bush ask? "Do the members of the crew have Bibles? Why don't they have Bibles?
 Can we get them Bibles? Would they like Bibles?" Then the president remembers a strategic factor
 even more crucial. "Are they getting any exercise?" Do the captive US personnel
 have access to exercise equipment? Is there a Stairmaster on Hainan Island?

 OK, maybe the last bit is an embellishment but the rest is George W Bush in his own words,
 helpfully provided by the White House as proof of his deep engagement in the China crisis.
 You and I may think this transcript has the reverse effect - confirming the satirists' caricature
 of Bush as a know-nothing, fundamentalist fitness freak - but the Bushies released it to prove how
 presidential their man has become. "He's very curious, and so he asked a lot of
 questions," gushed an irony-proof Karen Hughes, Bush's press secretary.

 There'll be more boasting this week as Bush the Younger heads towards his
 100th day in office on Sunday. Ever since Franklin D Roosevelt used his first 100
 days to rush through the New Deal, this Napoleonic marker has been the occasion
  for an interim report on the new president. So what should we make of the new man
 - and is there a lesson there for us?

 Yes, he has proved as verbally challenged as we expected. The list of Bushisms grows daily,
 a classic added after the president refused to answer reporters' questions at the Quebec Summit
 of the Americas, "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."

 But the key expectation has proved spectacularly false. The savants told us
 there was little to choose between Gore, a Clintonite New Democrat, and Bush, a
 self-styled "compassionate conservative".   Both were huddling in the soft centre:
 Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Whoever won, little would change.

Well, no one's saying that now. For the promise that this would be a Republican Lite
 administration has proved naive, if not positively deceitful. Instead, in 100 short days,
 we have seen the Bush regime establish itself as the most brazenly rightwing of modern times.
 As the ecstatic head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enthuses, the new crowd
 are "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration".

 At least you cannot fault their energy. In little over three months they have notched
 up a roll-call of policy atrocities that will keep US pressure groups busy for years.
 Pick your subject. Women's rights? Bush used the very first day of his presidency to
 block aid to any international group that promotes or offers abortion, even in
 developing countries where that help is vital. Children? He proposed saving money
 by slashing programmes designed to fight child abuse.

 But let's not forget the area where Bush has made his strongest mark: the
 environment. Since January he has trashed the Kyoto protocol, broken his
 promise to reduce carbon emissions, proposed drilling in America's last
 wilderness, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, called for more nuclear power
 plants and "delayed" a demand that the utilities reduce the amount of arsenic in
 drinking water. The Bushies are backpedalling now, but their message
 could not have been clearer: the planet is not safe in their hands.

 In international affairs, a retro brand of hawkery has become the defining
 philosophy of a president who promised a "humble foreign policy". Not content with
 reviving the cold war with Russia and triggering a new one with China (though
 yesterday's compromise on arms sales to Taiwan may be enough to prevent
 relations souring further), Bush scuppered the growing reconciliation between the two
 Koreas. That way he can still cite the "rogue state" of North Korea as the
 excuse for his ludicrous Son of Star Wars scheme.

 Meanwhile, the closest thing we have to a policy crusade is Bush's drive for a $1.6
 trillion tax cut - 43% of which will go to the richest 1% in America: billionaires who
 don't need, and don't even want, the cash.

 It is an appalling record, assembled in less than 14 weeks. What it amounts to is the wish list
 of the wealth wing of the Republican party, granted in full. Big business does not just have
 influence over this administration - it is this administration. Look at the multimillionaires around
 the cabinet table. Scan the resumes: chief of staff Andrew Card is the former top lobbyist of
 General Motors; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
 It's no surprise this lot are making life easier for corporate power. Despite the window-dressing,
 which allowed compassionate W to present his cabinet as a "diverse" mix from across America,
 this is the boardroom presidency.

 Is there a lesson from this three-month, crash course in Bushism?
 You bet. First, the right are serious about power. Many expected Bush to clip his wings,
 to govern from the centre, in deference to his lack of a national mandate. But that's not how
 the right works. It thinks power belongs to it, as a law of nature - and when its got power,
 it uses it. It's only the centre-left that is scared of its own shadow, too frightened to act even
 when it's won by a landslide.

 Second, progressives must never again be deluded into thinking there is no difference
 between us and our enemy. The right may pretend it has changed, but it will be just
 that: a pretence. "Forgive me, Al Gore," pleaded one liberal US columnist, recanting her
 previous line that Democrats and Republicans were as bad as each other.
 She's now seen that Democrats may be bad - but Republicans are worse.

 So what might be a practical response?
 How about the left resolve to pursue power as deliberately as our adversaries? In the
 United States, that would mean no repeat of the 2000 split which saw Ralph Nader
 win votes that might otherwise have gone to Gore. Third parties make sense in
 parliamentary systems - and Nader's Greens should compete for congressional
 seats - but not in presidential races, where there is but a single prize at stake.
 There can be only one president: next time the left have to unite behind one candidate.

 In Britain, unity may well take the opposite form. Progressives lost four
 successive elections here because the anti-Tory vote was split between Labour
 and Lib Dems. Tactical voting in 1997 finally found a way around the problem,
 with supporters of the two parties effectively swapping their votes. Now there
 are moves, led by Billy Bragg and others, to formalise that process. Good luck to
 them. Should there be any doubt about motive, we need only cast a glance
 across the Atlantic. For that is what happens when the left forgets its enemy.

 jonathan.freedland@guardian.co.uk