What Is This Thing Called "Change?"

Dear old Rush is in better case today than he was Friday, on the day after the Iowa caucuses.

But he confesses to being flummoxed by all this talk of “change.” That’s because, as far as he can tell, a chap like Barack Obama doesn’t represent change at all, but just same-old-same-old adding another layer of government programs on the already rather substantial government program cake.

Rush is thinking like a political activist, not like an ordinary voter.

Voters are not saying that they want to change the government programs; they are just saying that they want a change at the top. They are tired and frightened by the “stress” of the Bush years, which has been one thing after another. First there was the tech bust and the biggest bear market in a generation. Then came the housing boom, which was reported as an exciting party but was probably, for many voters, very frightening. Now we have the housing bust and a possible recession. People are right to be scared of that Dynamic Duo.

Then there’s the Iraq war. Voters might be less worried about Iraq if the political parties had been united on it. But the Democrats, driven by their anti-war base, have been using the Iraq war for partisan political ends, and so the voters are torn and conflicted.

That’s why I keep saying that we need a Democrat in the White House in 2009. We need to know what Democrats would really do if they were in charge of the war on terror, and we need to know what they would really do in reforming the domestic programs of the United States.

Then Republicans could do some serious thinking and policy analysis. There’s plenty to do. The welfare state has been growing for 70 years and is more or less completely unreformed.

What do the voters want? Who knows?