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Now, Reagan and Bush I outspent Clinton by a wide margin.

Did they amend the constitution when I wasn't looking?

Bush has had a far more powerful position with his congress than these others did. Given 9/11, he has enjoyed a lot more support, has been given a pass even by many liberal voters on both spending and as commander-in-chief.

I think that Reagan proposed huge budgets to get the Dims to pass his defense increases. In other words, he offered the Dims a huge expansion of all spending in order to get his defense spending. His advisers believed it was important enough to make this trade and let the Dims take us into deficit. Even economically, you can defend their judgment in this. The alternative was a much higher level of defense spending forever.

Bush I was simply weak and caved to the Dims on a tax increase, breaking his only campaign promise "Read My Lips...". And the voters didn't like the higher taxes and they didn't like the lie. They liked kicking Saddam out of Kuwait but didn't forgive the broken promise. And Clinton had the Arousal Factor with the female vote.

Clinton's first two years were big-spending liberalism, actually spending more than he probably was comfortable with. He listened to the big-government liberals in Congress. They were wrong. And Gingrich led the GOP to take the House for the first time in, what, 42 years. So Clinton spent big in '92-93, then had to deal with the Gingrich House who then impeached his sorry ass (An' we he'ped!).

It's pretty hard to say that Bush II faces the same problems with proposing a budget to an opposition congress as compared to his immediate predecessors. Or the problems he has had with strong judicial nominees for that matter.

Of his predecessors, only Clinton had a two-year run with both houses of Congress in his own party's hands.

No president is king. The veto has its limits. But some presidents have a better excuse for failing to rein in Congress than others. And the conservative criticism of Bush is that he proposes and campaigns for expanded funding and the intrusion of the federal government into areas like education where it has no constitutional mandate whatsoever.

But the president and the federal government do have a responsibility to protect our borders. It is the original purpose of the federal government. No one seems very serious about it though.

"Bush I was simply weak and caved to the Dims on a tax increase, breaking his only campaign promise "Read My Lips...".

Let's start there.

Bush I broke his tax pledge in order to get some much needed budgetary concessions from congressional Democrats. His broken pledge helped balance the budget, and helped fully realize the Reagan economic recovery.

Thinking challenged right wingers failed to understand what was happening, and allowed themselves to be led away from the GOP by the Democrats, and in fact, handed the bragging rights to the combined efforts of Reagan and Bush I, plus the greatest economic boom in recent history, to William Jefferson Clinton.

"And the conservative criticism of Bush is that he proposes and campaigns for expanded funding and the intrusion of the federal government into areas like education where it has no constitutional mandate whatsoever."

You can't bring a knife to a gun fight. The game is politics, not rhetoric.

Bush has not yet begun campaigning, but one of the things that I already know will not be much of an issue in this campaign, is education, and the need for more spending. Ted Kennedy and the Democrats got every dime they wanted for education from Bush, if they try the old Democratic mantra that there's something wrong with our school system, it will backfire, we have proved that their method of throwing money at the problem is not the solution, I expect a huge move toward vouchers in the second Bush II term.

Give them enough rope...