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"There is simply not enough of a political constituency for old-style federalism to make it possible to roll back the federal government to a pre-New Deal reading of the Constitution."

Let me know when someone tries it so I can see if you're right. When's the last time the federal government actually devolved something to the states entirely? When's the last time it was proposed by a president?

No, it MIGHT be a third rail if someone on the national scene even pretended it was a possibility, but they simply don't. Instead, we get federal money given back to the states under federal constraints, for highways, education, all sorts of crap the federal government ought not to be regulating.

Consider the political problem in concrete terms.

Suppose that next Monday, Bush and the Republican Congressional leaders announced and swiftly enacted a revised federal budget based on pre-New Deal federalism -- a reduction in the federal budget of more than seventy per cent. What do you think the Democrats, the unions, the Left, and the news media will do?

(A) Not oppose the drastic budget cut because it will be wildly popular with the public, who secretly hunger for such a program despite polls and election results to the contrary. Or,

(B) Denounce the drastic budget cut in the fiercest terms as being an example of "Republican extremists" trying to "turn the clock back" with dire consequences for "women, the poor, and minorities," and a "betrayal of the American workingman and middle class."

How do you think that the millions of dependents of the federal welfare state will react? When the crunch comes at election time, who do you think will have won? I submit that there will have been a liberal Democratic landslide -- and not a ghost of a chance of any other result.

In politics as in most everything, major changes are usually accomplished in incremental steps and radical proposals fare well only under extreme conditions. Rather than staking everything on a wild, impossible odds gamble, the far better course is to take the modern welfare state apart brink by brick over decades -- just as it was built.