Since I agreed with Frum's take on Rove, it stands to reason that I agree with Jonah's similar analysis as well. I only wonder about his remark that "the Medicare prescription drug benefit may be surprisingly popular, but the promised political windfall never materialized." It depends on what your definition of windfall is, I suppose. The prescription drug benefit may not be remembered as a step toward a lasting conservative majority, but my sense is that it was intended more as a necessary concession to a popular liberal idea - with a few free-market elements and some sops to business constituencies worked in, obviously - than as a pillar of Rove's long-term realignment strategy. And in the short term, it did produce something of a political windfall: Promising a prescription-drugs benefit on the campaign trail in 2000 clearly helped Bush in his race against Gore, and passing it helped the President more in 2004 that most people realize. Bush's biggest gains, by age bracket, from '00 to '04 came among voters 60 and older, and without Medicare Part D I'm willing to bet that those numbers would have been different enough to tip a few extra states to John Kerry.
« Exploring The Infinite Abyss | Main | Wanted: A Political Strategy » The Sleeper Issue14 Aug 2007 04:13 pm Comments (5)
And the fact that it was largely unnecessary and that it will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt in the future? Hey, so what? It got Bush elected, didn't it? Isn't that the important thing? 
Well, that was a surprisingly agreeable David Frum column.
More like the "huge issue that died an early death" than the "sleeper issue." Vanneman, yea of course. It isn't moral to pass a huge entitlement you don't believe in so you can neutralize a campaign issue. But they didn't pretend not to do it, and the people who complain about it now are the people who knew this about Bush and still supported him passionately in 2004. That is what is so infuriating now--even if conservatives didn't love what he was doing, they loved him and worshipped him; and that needs repenting.
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Of course, the prescription drug benefit for old folks might well have swung the 2004 election. This, of course, would be in accord with Rove's strategy of compassionate conservatism, which, however wasteful of public treasure, met the sentiments of the American electorate. Meanwhile, let the Boomers in the long run figure out how to pay for it. At least this is rather better than the delights of Hillary Care, which would have yielded Canadian style medicinal queues and a further busted budget.
Posted by Peter Leavitt | August 14, 2007 5:24 PM