PRESIDENT BUSH will today deliver a “liberty inaugural” address, promising to use his second term to advance freedom at home while pushing democratic reform abroad.

But Mr Bush’s ambitious agenda is already running into trouble amid signs that his flagship domestic proposal, private pension accounts, may be holed below the waterline.

Moreover, despite his decisive victory in the presidential election in November, polls show that Mr Bush has failed to win a second honeymoon from an American public that remains deeply divided about him and his policies.

Mr Bush will limit himself during the nation’s 16th second inaugural address to broad themes, leaving finer details to his State of the Union address next month. He will say that peace abroad can best be achieved by spreading human freedoms, a familiar theme of his Middle East policy that he aims to make the hallmark of his foreign policy.

In domestic terms, Mr Bush will tout his plans for a private pension account into which younger Americans can divert some of the social security taxes that they currently pay the federal Government.

He is aiming high, pressing for private healthcare accounts, a sweeping shift of the tax burden from investment income to consumption, a curb on medical malpractice lawsuits and an amnesty on illegal Mexican immigrants.

However, second terms have tended to deliver debilitating scandal rather than political victories. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Ronald Reagan escaped similar censure over the Iran-Contra affair and Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate.

Possibly more relevant, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson found their second terms swamped by wars, in Korea and Vietnam, that sapped their domestic credibility.

A paradox for Mr Bush is that, despite his clearcut victory in the last election, voters believe that he has less of a mandate now than he did after the “stolen” 2000 election.

The country is less optimistic than it was, and more doubtful about Mr Bush. Four years ago the public viewed him as a “uniter, not a divider” by 58 to 36 per cent. Now the figure is 49:49, according to a USA Today poll. The proportion of those who believe it was worth going to war in Iraq has fallen to a low of 39 per cent in a Los Angeles Times poll, though there is no support for bringing troops home quickly.

Mr Bush has claimed a mandate for his reform proposals, yet 65 per cent of voters said that his victory did not mean public support for changing the state pension system.

Even Mr Bush has conceded that he would not push for a constitutional ban on gay marriage as he had campaigned, because the maths in Congress were against him. Mr Bush’s approval ratings are barely above 50 per cent, significantly below other presidents starting second terms who enjoyed public support towards 60 per cent.

The rawness of the presidential election campaign is still present. John Kerry, the defeated Democrat, was one of only two Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday to vote against the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. Dr Rice is expected to be approved by the full Senate today.

But the most significant domestic development came from Bill Thomas, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, who predicted that Mr Bush’s pension plans would become “a dead horse”. Mr Thomas’s position and stature on Capitol Hill mean that the White House may have to undertake a fundamental rethink of the plan.

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