Similarly, Barack Obama rose to national prominence by stressing what Blue America and Red America have in common rather than in how they differed. His attacks on "failed Bush policies" left it ambiguous whether he was objecting to Republican ideology or Republicans' incompetence.
Looking back on all the presidential contests held since Obama as a Columbia undergraduate was parroting leftist criticisms of Ronald Reagan, it can be argued that Republicans have won the elections that turned on ideology and that Democrats have won the elections that turned on competence.
Republican victories in 1984, 1988 and 2004 were clearly endorsements of Ronald Reagan's and George W. Bush's policies. Democratic victories in 1992 and 2008 were indictments of the two George Bushes for incompetence and in 1996 an endorsement of the competence of Bill Clinton.
The one election in this period that is hard to classify was in 2000 and had a split verdict, with the Democrat winning the popular vote and the Republican the Electoral College.
Where are we now? The oil spill puts Obama's reputation for competence in doubt, while the public opinion polls make it clear his ideology is being rejected much more emphatically than George W. Bush's ever was.
Bush's bipartisan education and Medicare prescription drug bills were never rejected and targeted for repeal by substantial majorities, as Obama's partisan health care bill has been. Bush's tax cuts never elicited the dismissive scorn that voters continue to express toward the Obama Democrats' stimulus package.
On foreign policy, Obama gets relatively good marks on Iraq and Afghanistan, where he is arguably following the trajectory of Bush's policies. While Bush was in office, Democrats issued fire-breathing calls for ending America's involvement in the conflicts, but today that sentiment is voiced by only a small segment of the electorate.
Before the oil spill, the Obama Democrats, noting their policies' unpopularity, might have asked voters to decide on "competence, not ideology," as Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis did in 1988. Now, suddenly, that doesn't seem like a viable theme for 2010 or 2012.