I'm not sure I'd dignify Bush's tax cuts by calling them "ideological", because demand-side stimulus flies in the face of the basic economic orthodoxy that's a pillar of conservative ideology. Demand-side stimulus is really just political pandering to the upscale constituency that elected Bush. "Elect me and I'll put some money in yer pocket."

The simple laws of supply-and-demand tell you:

1) When demand is low and/or falling, supply stimulus is impotent. No business owner with half a brain would invest in expansion--no matter how easy it was to get capital--without seeing a market for the products the increased capacity could create. (And for gawdsake, the production infrastructure is running at only about 60% capacity these days--who needs to build more of it?!!?)

2) When demand is high and/or increasing, capital to finance expansion is easy to come by. It's embarrassingly obvious to point out that stimulus isn't required in good times.

When Tom tries to portray the argument as being over whether the tax cuts caused the recession, he's setting up a straw man argument. That's where Republicans wish the argument to be. But the tack that Democrats will take is to paint the vivid image of Bush fiddling while the economy burns. It's rather hard to put a happy face on putting money in the pockets of the wealthy while 3 million middle class people have lost their jobs. Those people, milllions more trying to cope with reduced income, and the many millions more living daily with insecurity, aren't going to be interested in conservative ideological purity. People vote their pocketbooks and their immediate circumstances, and aren't at all impressed by the argument that if they just suffer quietly long enough, some day supply-side stimulus will make everything better and vindicate the Republicans.

What answer could Bush possibly come up with to the perennial question "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Well, we can expect him to flog the war on terror for all it's worth to try and distract attention from the economy. But as powerful as it is to press the fear button, it's still vulnerable to the reasonable observation that it will take a strong economy to pay for the war on terror. The strength of the economy is itself a national security issue. The new question in 2004 will be "Are better off and safer than you were four years ago?"

No.