Andrew Samwick on Karl Rove
Andrew writes:
Vox Baby: Rove and Mythology: That said, there is quite a bit of myth in Rove's interview. Gigot's editorial comments around the quotes from Rove are right on the money:
Mr. Rove... [is] less persuasive on Medicare, where he insists that market reforms and health savings accounts are building a "critical mass" of popular support that will make them unrepealable. Yet Democrats are even now trying to kill Medicare Advantage, blocked only by the promise of a veto. If Mrs. Clinton wins in 2008, the Medicare drug expansion may prove to have been all spending and no reform.
He also insists that Social Security reform was worth the failed effort, and that Mr. Bush's ideas will be adopted inevitably by some future president. I ask if, given Mr. Bush's falling approval ratings in 2005 due to Iraq, he shouldn't have pushed for something less ambitious. Not a chance. "You cannot advance on the fronts you want to advance if you're playing mini-ball," he says, once again sounding like Mr. Bush.
Medicare Part D was a betrayal of conservatism. Conservatives are supposed to see fiscal responsibility as their friend, precisely because the need to pay for what the government does should constrain the overall size of that government. This Administration let go of fiscal responsibility early in its first term and has been undermined by its absence ever since.... The President's attempt at Social Security reform was the first casualty.... The President lost all credibility... when he decided that the short-term non-entitlement budget imbalances "don't matter" and when he passed a Medicare expansion whose unfunded obligations were larger than those in Social Security. That was contradiction number one....
Contradiction number two came from the President's statements that he wanted to "strengthen" the system. It is reasonable to believe that strengthening an entitlement program means putting more resources into it. There was no plan put forward by the Administration, even in the form of a trial balloon, that tried to strengthen the system with new resources. That doesn't mean the proposals were bad ideas, but it does mean that the honest description of what his plans due is to pare back projected future spending so that it is balanced by projected future revenues. The President's intentions here were both conservative and (to use Rove's word) ambitious. They just weren't presented coherently, and so they got nowhere.
This notion that the President's legacy on matters of fiscal policy--which will be written by historians (and bloggers!) that Rove can't spin--will be anything but a severe and harsh critique is what I consider the Myth of Rove.
