Universal health care usually costs less as a percentage of GNP. By saying some lies are more attractive than others you seem to be conceding Bush is lying so my point is made. As to whether the Democratic nominee will be as big a liar, that remains to be seen. Zero tolerance is the way to handle lies and distortions from all politicians.

A lot of support for the Democrat, probably Kerry, will be whether he can be fiscally responsible enough to repair all this, present a plan for doing so, and sell it to the public. That will also depend to a large degree on whether the Republicans in the congress get over their binge of the last few years and work with him.

I think any Democrat is going to be all fiscal conservatism, no new programs, scale back Medicare, and slash defence spending. Then do what economists tell him to fix the economy, no wild unproven ideas. He might get it fixed up enough in time for Jeb to come in and stuff it up all over again.

As I have said many times I don't consider myself to be a left winger, I just don't consider Bush to have a Republican philosophy. Normally Republicanism is a fusion of Conservatism and Libertarianism and neither of those agree with most of what Bush does. Therefore to me he's not a Republican. I think he's just representing special interests instead of a political philosophy, which happens regularly to politicial parties of both sides.

People like Andrew Sullivan, Tacitus, Balloon Juice, etc are simply pointing out the same thing. Philosophically they are all Republicans and they think Bush is not following that philosophy.

But, if this is the level of coherence, grasp of reality, and honesty that is really at work in his understanding of domestic fiscal policy, then we are in even worse trouble than we thought. We have a captain on the fiscal Titanic who thinks he's in the Caribbean.