Here's the scene: A Republican president avenges a loss of eight years prior with one of the slimmest victories in presidential history. He's aware of the weakness of his mandate so, as a savvy politician, he governs from the political center, co-opting Democratic issues on a regular basis. Of whom am I speaking?

If you guessed George W. Bush, you're wrong. I am talking about Richard Nixon, who in 1968 beat Hubert Humphrey for the presidency after having lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Republican Nixon - surprise, surprise - turned out to be one of the most liberal presidents of the 20th century:

Nixon got the government heavily involved in affirmative action through his "Philadelphia plan" of minority preferences for government contracts. He raised Social Security dramatically, lifting many elderly out of poverty. He proposed universal health coverage, and even universal welfare payments. To top it off, he opened relations with Communist China.

Granted, the times were different and, of course, he was ultimately undone by the Watergate scandal. But Nixon's move to the center picked off many Democratic voters and spelled the beginning of the end of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal Democratic majority.

In fact, aside from the blip of the Jimmy Carter years, Nixon forged a Republican lock on the White House until H. Ross Perot spoiled it, and Bill Clinton squeaked in during the three-way race of 1992. The groundwork of the Ronald Reagan revolution to which Bush now lays claim, was really the Nixon majority. Even Reagan did little to roll back the growth in entitlement programs and social support. As long as he got his tax cuts for the rich and his run-up of defense spending, he let the Democratic Congress keep its sacred cows.

Fast-forward to 2003 and to another Republican who squeaked into the White House with no mandate - having lost the popular vote. The sensible move would be for George W. to govern to his left. But instead of learning the lesson of Nixon, Bush is doing exactly the opposite. Determined not to make the "mistake" his father did when he lost the fervor of his base constituency of religious extremists and anti-tax zealots, he has championed the most revolutionary set of policies in modern history.

Let's start with foreign policy. Like Nixon, Bush is bogged down in a guerrilla war (or two) in foreign lands where anti-colonial sentiment runs high. And if Bush's new doctrine of "pre-emptive war" is not radical enough, add the administration's abortive attempt to develop a betting market on terrorist strikes, the consideration of the deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons, and the scrapping of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty (not to mention the rejection of the Kyoto accord on greenhouse emissions and the U.S. withdrawal from the International Criminal Court). Bush is attempting to create a unilateral, global empire the likes of which may have not been seen since ancient Rome.

On the domestic front, Bush has gone beyond the Reagan revolution. Tax rates on the rich are at levels reminiscent of the early 1960s. His record budget deficit has crippled aid to the states, so that they, too, are facing their worst shortfalls in memory. States provide most social services, so the Bush shortfall translates into a very real (and perhaps calculated) decline in services. This means, for example, larger classes for children and less supervision of foster-care placements. Combined with proposals to stiffen requirements on welfare recipients and push Medicare and Social Security into the risky private market, his domestic agenda marks the complete undoing of the New Deal.

Meanwhile, as he decries big government, Bush has presided over the largest expansion of federal power in recent history. But his new bureaucracy does not provide a social safety net. As embodied by the Department of Homeland Security and Patriot Act, the purpose of the Bush regime is to surveil and control the U.S. population. For example, the feds can now detain citizens indefinitely, without access to lawyers, merely by declaring them "enemy combatants" in this so-called war on terror - undoing hundreds of years of legal protections and civil rights to create a police state.

Nixon, Reagan and Bush I were all restrained by a Democratic Congress (at least one house). Bush II isn't, so he has become the mouthpiece for right-wing revolutionaries who have been waiting for just such a moment in history.

While Bush should be emulating Nixon's ability to play both sides of the political fence, the only area in which he seems to take after his Republican predecessor is in the deception department. The result is an America that will look radically different by 2004 than it did just a few short years ago.