Hey, you can't expect the man to ignore the pillowtalk from liberal homos all the time, can you?

"Why are fiscal conservatives still supporting him?" Because, unlike Andy "How-dare-you-infringe-upon-my-right-to-your-tacit-blessing-of-my-sodomy" Sullivan, fiscal conservatives 1) realize that being single issue voters is a good way of making yourself politically irrelevant, 2) don't believe John Kerry is going to be anything but worse on this issue, and 3) understand that the Congress is responsible for spending and a veto by the President expends political capital necessary to fight the war on terror.

I'll add a few points.

1. We were just in a long, painful recession. It may make sense in terms of the budget to cut spending during a recession, but it makes little sense in terms of getting the economy moving again. I think both supply-siders and Keynesians agree that you want MORE money floating around in a recession, not less (although they disagree as to why, and as to how helpful government spending is).

To cut spending during such a situation would have been penny-wise but pound-foolish. If cutting spending causes a further retraction of the economy, congratulations, you've just worsened the deficit (and also prolonged the recession), as Hoover did.

2. For several years, economists were talking about deflation being the main threat to our economy. Deflation's one of the worst traps known in economics. You don't want provoke a deflationary death-spiral by contracting the supply of money.

3. You can talk about cutting spending all you like, but it is one of the most difficult political sells there is, especially when "people are hurting" and the rest of it.

George Bush does not have a pliant Congress to work with. He holds the House, but he has no control over the Senate. The Senate is barely in Republican hands in nominal terms. It is decidedly in liberal hands on these issues.

Yes, yes, Reagan pushed through his cuts with Democrats in control of both houses. But he cowed them owing to his landslide victory. Bush doesn't have this club in his bag. Indeed, the Democrats have been going insane for years in an effort to fight him at every turn.

4. Bush could veto some of these spending bills. But to what end? If the liberals keep passing the same bill, to whom, precisely, does he appeal?

To the public, which, let's face it, is big on spending cuts in theory but whose heart bleeds when they hear that Mrs. Johnson won't be getting as generous a heating-oil subsidy this year?

To the media? Right. The media, which portrayed Gingrinch as the bad guy in the Gingrich-Clinton budget dispute of 1995.

I think we have to be a little realistic here. If it were the case that Bush could win these battles by initiating a stand-off, I'd call him a coward and a spendthrift for not doing so.

But what if he thinks (as I think) that he's doomed to lose such a standoff? What is the point of the exercise in that case?

5. Finally, the previous deficits were cured not by cutting discretionary spending. They were cured by Clinton cutting military spending-- all of Clinton's government cutting was owed to cutting the size of the military. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing (although I think he cut too deeply), but he was able to balance the budget chiefly because a previous costly obligation (maintaining a huge standing army to face the Soviets) evaporated, no thanks to him.

They were owed to cutting the military, and to an economy that grew enough to pour enough money into federal coffers to create a surplus.

The deficit is already falling. It will fall further. The budget surplus came as a complete surprise to Clinton and the country, because, as someone termed it, deficits and surpluses are "massively directional" depending on the health of the economy.

I don't know how long it will take to grow out of the current deficit. I expect a long time, but not as long as liberals like Sullivan predict.

Can Bush do better? Yes. He can do far better.

Should he do better? Obviously.

But I think it's a little silly to judge him based on problems that are largely not of his making. It isn't just that Bush prefers to run deficits than make difficult choices about spending cuts.

It's that the country as a whole prefers to do so, whether the country wishes to admit it to itself or not, and in a democracy, the will of the people usually prevails.

"...and in a democracy, the will of the people usually prevails."

Which is why the Massacheusetts Supreme Court has proven this year that Massacheusetts is not a democracy, and Gavin Newsom tried to prove (results pending) that San Francisco is not a democracy. Consider that my point relates to Andy Sullivan's pet project.

Usually, I says.