Reading the Political Tea Leaves

Here's the latest from a Washington insider who asks not to be named. Sure, he's a Republican, but he has never drunk from the party Kool-Aid that would preclude him from examining a forthcoming election in a cool and rational manner.

"Let's see what the political tea leaves say about next year's presidential election:

1) We have a stunning 7.2 percent economic growth figure has been revised upwards to a staggering 8.2 percent rate that is predicted to level off at a comfortable 4% rate later this year.

2) We have a Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, who proposes to re-regulate key sectors of the American economy, a la Jimmy Carter BEFORE Carter de-regulated the airlines.

3) We have Governor Dean first embracing the pick-up driving, Confederate flag bumper sticker-toting crowd only to be forced into repudiating the very same people by the rest of the Democratic field there-by locking the forthcoming Democratic ticket out of the South for the balance of the election.

4) We have Congressional Democrats despondent over a Republican Medicare reform package that a disciplined majority drove through the House to wails of Pelosi-led protest putting the Democratic Party directly at odds with a $400 billion benefit to seniors.

5) We have a Democratic Party in critical disarray over the only issue that will ultimately matter in the next election:  national security policy.  To the extent that one could say a Democratic national security policy exists it would seem to argue that U.S. interests are best defined and defended by...the French.

6) We have a Republican incumbent who enjoys the mirror-image of advantages to be derived from the failure and dissaray of the opposition:  a strong economy, an economic policy that seems connected to the way the a free economy actually works, an impregnable regional political base in those areas of the country that are growing the fastest, a Nixon-goes-to-China Medicare program, and a national security policy that seeks to fight the war on terror in terrorism's front yard instead of Central Park.

7) Add to this a $200 million political warchest for President Bush and the near-unanimous support of his party.

Anyone care to wager on who takes the Oath of Office in January, 2005?"