George W. Bush, as President of die United States, can be counted on in the first six months to . . . well, I should be honest here (with hand on heart). I don’t think any of us can say with much precision what my governor will accomplish in the new office whose door he finally squeaked through. But don’t drop the family crystal when I say, with all respect to those of another mind on this question, that he mY favorably surprise some arch-skeptics.

As a Republican party chief and state governor, George W. disappointed with some regularity a lot of us fossilized conservatives who wouldn’t have minded had he proposed dismantling our photogenic capitol brick by brick and sowing the site with salt. He kind of did a good job here—in any case a far better job than Ann Richards had in the preceding four years. He failed to shrink government, but he voiced Christian moral convictions without guile, didn’t shrink from application of the death penalty, tried to raise educational standards, and, not least, presented for the general delectation a family nice as all get-out. He set a good gubernatorial tone—a charge no conservative ever leveled at Richards.

I like and respect the governor, and if this quirky preference inspires readers to whoop up a lynch party in my honor, be it even so. I know some good hidey-holes.

In this life, I have concluded after well-nigh six decades, you do the best you can. The best America was able to do in the year 2000 was George W. Bush. That is why he is our President, and I am content with the prospect.

It is a matter of expectations. A cat won’t bark; a fish won’t run the 400-meter relay. We need not expect George W. Bush, a moderately conservative President, to reenact the Reagan presidency—to the extent that would please the more hard-line brethren. And given the narrowness of Bush’s victory, we should expect little ideological vigor. I, for one, don’t propose to spend the next four years grousing that American voters didn’t choose the American Maggie Thatcher—whoever that may be.

As he did in Texas, Bush will upgrade the tone and atmosphere in Washington. How could it be otherwise? After Bill and Hillary Clinton, President Robert Downey, Jr., would make the Oval Office smell like sachet and spring wildflowers. It may take time for the difference to sink in on many Americans, but sink in it must. Bush is a good person. No cigars, no Lincoln Bedroom stayovers, no FBI files or travel-office fiascoes. No Janet Renos.

Will Bush stock his administration with reliable Tories? Of course not. Reagan didn’t either, save at the Department of Justice and other select venues; but Reagan, unlike Bush, enjoyed a kind of mandate. Is the point not obvious, even so? Under Bush, no Lani Guiniers, no Donna Shalalas, no Warren Christophers, no Larry Tribes on the federal bench (or promotions from the Florida Supreme Court).

Maybe we don’t know in detail what the Bush-Cheney administration will actually do, but we can be quite certain what it won’t do: veto tax cuts and bans on partial-birth abortion, kowtow to feminists and the gay-rights lobby, starve the military of needed funds, scorn private-sector approaches to problems such as Social Security.

Some readers of this magazine will take umbrage at Bush’s amenability to fairly high levels of immigration. They might reflect that he isn’t really a throw-wide-the-gates type and that Hispanic voters will decide whether somewhat conservative Republicans or relentlessly left-liberal Democrats govern the United States for some time to come. The black vote seems permanently lost to the Democrats. As an immigration centrist (about the only issue on which I’m centrist), I’m willing to sit back and see if Bush—who got 30 percent of the Hispanic vote versus five percent of the black vote—can do some coalition-building. I think he will try.

So bring on the Lynch party. I think we have, in our new President, a pretty good guy who will be for us far more often than he will be against us. And won’t that be a bracing change? As we say in Texas, whoooo-eeee!