Rove's Blind Spot: He retires, but his cluelessness lives on

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Rove's Blind Spot
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 15, 2007; Page A11

....In the wake of Bush's 2004 reelection, (Josh Green reports in "The Atlantic,") Rove, newly promoted by Bush to domestic policy czar, concluded that the time for this realignment had come. Green documents Rove's mistakes as he set out to undo the major social legislation of the mid-20th century:

He assumed congressional and public support for policies on which Bush had not campaigned; his relations with Republican members of Congress were abysmal; his incessant campaigning against the Democrats ensured that there would be no bipartisan support for programs that entailed considerable political risk.

But Rove's miscalculations were actually more fundamental than those that Green enumerates. At bottom, he and Bush overlooked the epochal growth of economic insecurity in America. They refused to see that the very economic changes they celebrated had made Americans understandably nervous and pessimistic to an unprecedented extent about the nation's long-term economic prospects. And so, as employers were abandoning their provision of retirement benefits to employees, Bush and Rove called for abandoning the government's commitment as well. At a time when ordinary Americans' incomes were stagnating, and when growing numbers of Americans understood that they were in some nebulous competition with millions of lower-paid workers in other lands that the government seemed powerless to mitigate, Bush and Rove proposed legalizing the undocumented immigrants who had flowed across the border.

Could there have been a more profound misreading of the American temper? As political and policy czar rolled into one, Rove should have understood that Americans craved the security of a controllable border and a predictable and decent income. Instead, Rove's wish was father to the thought: Realignment required dismantling Democratic programs. It required winning more Hispanic voters (never mind that on economic issues, Hispanic voters are resoundingly liberal). It required the Rove program. Damn the torpedoes.

In the end, the Rove program for Bush's second term was stillborn for lack of support. And yet Rove and Bush seem to have bequeathed their tone-deafness on economic insecurity to a number of the Republicans seeking Bush's job. Rudy Giuliani, for example, has proposed a health-care plan modeled on Bush's: It has no expanded role for government, relies on the market and will not alter our current system or cover any additional Americans. Indeed, on health care, pensions, trade, the bargaining power of American workers, the affordability of higher education -- on a whole set of issues that shape Americans' lives -- the Republican field is largely silent. Rove retires; his cluelessness lives on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401330.html?nav=hcmodule