WASHINGTON - While the country remains split down the middle politically after yesterday's fiercely contested mid-term campaign, President Bush heads into his next two White House years personally strengthened.
With the Republican retaining control of the House and recapturing the Senate, the GOP can reclaim the dominance it held last year before Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont switched party allegiance from Republican to Independent, stripping the Democrats of the one power base it has held.
The continuing closeness of party alignment indicates congressional gridlock is likely to continue, but Bush has a psychological and a numerical edge on Capitol Hill as he approaches a year that could see America at war.
The Democrats still command the numbers to block Bush's agenda, but without the legislative mechanisms they have had with the Senate leadership.
In a campaign in which no central issue seemed to sway the voters across the nation, except perhaps patriotic fervor in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush, by investing a huge amount of his time and prestige, bucked the history of first-term presidents in a midterm election.
Such presidents in the past nearly always have seen their party lose congressional strength two years after their own elections. In the past century, the party of a first-term president averaged a loss of about 30 House seats, and since the end of World War II, it has dropped an average of 25 House seats and four in the Senate.
Only twice in the past hundred years has such a party gained seats. The Republicans under Theodore Roosevelt added nine in the House in 1902. The Democrats under Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 picked up nine House seats and 10 Senate seats.
With the Republican Party retaining control of the House and winning the Senate, the president has scored a notable political coup. Yet it does not augur an easy time for him in dealing with Congress in the two years remaining in his term.
The results overall appeared to confirm this fall's cliche that politically the country has become a "50-50 nation," with the prospect of further congressional gridlock ahead.
A breakdown yesterday in exit polling - the principal mechanism for assessing why voters cast ballots as they did - means that it will probably take days to sort out what they were trying to say with their votes.
Though local issues from state to state no doubt were critical factors in the outcomes, Bush's popularity built in large part on his leadership of the war on terrorism likely buttressed his party.
Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe suggested as much last night, observing that the president's whirlwind campaigning paid off, along with support for him after the Sept. 11 attacks and his efforts to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
Many Republican candidates aggressively pushed the issue of homeland security and national defense, with the implication that Democrats in the Senate who balked at Bush's version of a new Department of Homeland Security were soft on defense.
Although this election was one of the most expensive for an off-year in history, with much of the money poured into negative commercials, the flood of campaign money did not achieve much beyond angering voters.
In terms of presidential politics, the re-election victory in Florida of the president's brother, Jeb Bush, was a psychological and pragmatic boost for the man in the White House after the 2000 election fiasco that put him there.
The overwhelming defeat of Democratic candidate Bill McBride indicated little or no backlash in the state against the marathon recounts of 2000 that put Florida's election machinery under a microscope. Also, with the state still in the hands of a Republican governor, the president can look forward to the same kind of strong sibling support that was critical to his election two years ago.
Last night, when Jeb Bush thanked "the president of the United States for coming down and lending a hand to his little brother," he left unsaid what his victory could mean in two years to his big brother.
As for the Democratic hopefuls for 2004, there was little in the overall results to cheer them - even Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was re-elected with only token opposition and won 81 percent of the vote.
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri dodged a report that if the Democrats failed to win control of the House and make him speaker, he would resign his leadership post to focus on a 2004 presidential bid.
Another prominent Democrat who did not hesitate, somewhat surprisingly, to express interest in running two years hence was former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart of Colorado. He dismissed as "ancient history" the possible impact of the sex scandal that drove him from the 1988 race.
With the Senate outcome still in doubt, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said last night that both parties must cooperate in a projected lame-duck session of Congress if anything is to be achieved, regardless of the lineup in each legislative body. "Nothing will get done at all unless it is done in a bipartisan way," he told CNN.
One issue used by candidates of both parties was party control of the House and Senate. Bush pushed it hard in his campaign speeches, especially in the final days of his campaigning. Yet the failure of either party to achieve a clear dominance in Congress indicates that the legislative impasse of the "50-50 nation" is likely to go on.