ELATED by the remarkable if provisional vindication of his democratic vision for the Middle East last weekend, President George W. Bush will tonight turn his attention to what may be the much tougher task of advancing his domestic political agenda.

With the usual pomp, and still basking in the glow of his own election triumph three months ago, Mr Bush will give the annual State of the Union speech to both houses of Congress and a national television audience of tens of millions.

Mr Bush’s aides were busy updating the speech yesterday to take account of Iraq’s historic vote on Sunday. The advance of democracy was the main point of Mr Bush’s inaugural address two weeks ago; it is not often that a president has to wait less than a fortnight to claim some vindication of the lofty aims set out at the start of his administration, but the President will certainly do so tonight.

Though he will stress the necessary caution that Sunday’s vote is only one step in a long process, he is sure to insist that history is now on the side of democratic change.

To drive home the point for the television audience, the White House has arranged for an Iraqi woman who voted on Sunday to be seated alongside Laura Bush in the First Lady’s perch in the gallery of the House of Representatives during tonight’s speech.

Mr Bush will use the opportunity of the Iraq elections to talk encouragingly about other hopeful signs for peace and progress in the broader Middle East — the Afghanistan polls last October, and the election of Mahmoud Abbas to succeed Yassir Arafat in the Palestinian Authority.

Though he is unlikely to repeat his 2002 “Axis of Evil” terminology, he will certainly remind the world of the threat from Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes; and will repeat US insistence that those two countries disarm or face unspecified consequences.

Just three weeks ahead of the first foreign trip of his second term — symbolically to Europe — he will emphasise his eagerness to work to promote global co-operation with sceptical allies.

But, while the inaugural address was almost wholly international, the State of the Union is likely to have a strongly domestic focus, and that is where bigger challenges may lie.

Mr Bush was re-elected on an ambitious platform of reform along a number of domestic policy fronts.

He wants to introduce a limited privatisation of social security and the state pension scheme, reform the complex tax code, change the legal system to make it harder for plaintiffs to bring frivolous lawsuits and lift some immigration restrictions to make it somewhat easier to enter the US.

On top of that, Mr Bush will have a chance to shape the nation’s jurisprudence for years, with the likely replacement of one or more supreme court justices and dozens of federal judges.

The problem is that, in the American political system, all of these require legislation or approval by the Congress, and though Mr Bush’s Republicans hold majorities in both houses, the prospects for success are highly uncertain.

In the Senate, the Republicans are five short of the 60 votes (out of 100) needed to block filibusters by Democrats that could scupper any piece of legislation. And, even in the House, there is growing restiveness among Republicans about some of Mr Bush’s proposals, notably social security and immigration reform.

And, despite their comprehensive defeat last November, Democrats are in no mood to roll over. Last week, Democrats in Congress vented unusual hostility towards the President’s earliest nominations to key second-term positions.

Condoleezza Rice was confirmed with more votes against her — 13 — than for any Secretary of State in the past 180 years. All the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee voted against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales, the author of some infamous memos on the legality of torture by the US military, for Attorney-General. Next week, Democrats look likely to pick the combative Howard Dean as the new chairman of the party’ s national committee.

All this is intended to signal to President Bush that, on both domestic and foreign policy, Democrats are ready for a fight.

Getting Iraqi voters to overcome their differences may prove a lot easier than getting entrenched opponents in Congress to agree.

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