Do Voters And Journalists Really Remember NOTHING?

I don't think so. The Net makes it a lot easier to remember things.

Here's a piece where Robert Reich talks about how Karl Rove counts on voters and journalists being real idiots. How can a person work in politics and hate the other players in his business -- actually loathe voters and journalists -- it's amazing. It's like being a baker and hating people who eat cake and people who make sugar. What gives?

Count on the American public's (and the media's) inability to remember anything from one year to the next. The Rove machine gave Bush tough talking points on corporate fraud when the newspapers were full of Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and Tyco, and when reporters were asking uncomfortable questions about Bush's and Cheney's own corporate dealings. Rove played for time, assuming that warmongering about Iraq (carefully orchestrated to begin just a few months before the midterm elections) would bury the issue. He was right. The administration dragged its feet on reform, and a year out almost nothing has changed. Another example: Rove sold the administration's $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 as a way to spur the ailing economy. Obviously it had no such effect, but Rove assumed no one would remember. Right again. Now the White House is selling the administration's 2003 tax cut as a way to spur the ailing economy.