The administration was on surer ground with the large, overdue tax cuts it engineered -- cuts that fattened family bank accounts and ginned up the economy, while narrowing, yes, narrowing, the federal deficit. Reid-Pelosi-Obama-Clinton Democrats can't wait, apparently, to give the federal government a larger share of the national income.
The past half-decade has been a clamorous one -- voices of all kinds crying out in all places (especially those enabled by computer technology) for this, for that, for the other, with politicians left to sort it all out.
No politician gets it right all the time, perhaps even a tenth of the time in this age when politicians -- woe and alas! -- imagine we want them to do everything for us. That would certainly include "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove. It would include Bush himself and everyone around him.
It's an imperfect world. Got that? If so, you're ahead of most political figures when they're standing at the mic or raising money over the phone. Karl Rove, good as he is (and that's mighty good), is no model of strategic perfection. I have just a charitable hunch that he himself, after all those years next to the political helm, knows better than before the limitations of mere power.
Maybe he'll explain in the book he means to write and I mean, with seriousness and rapt attention, to read the minute it emerges. |