He has had the latitude to make promises to protect health spending and clamp down on bankers, while avoiding promises to reverse recent tax rises.This emphasis on ideas may seem a rather lofty way of explaining the success of European conservatives during the recession, and the struggle of their allies in younger democracies to find a coherent and convincing voice.
Is it Mr. McCain, with his more prudent tax reductions, his emphasis on paying down the debt, and his openness to a privatized element in the Social Security trust fund?
For these Americans, the tax incentives and emphasis on new regulations of the Obama administration, together with the federal investment package, have created a feeling of long overdue justice and breathing space.
In the early days of the administration, the treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, argued for a greater emphasis on tax reform, along the lines of Ronald Reagan's tax package of 1986, which cut rates and broadened the base, without reducing the overall burden.
On the first anniversary of Prop 13, an article in The New York Times found that the principal impact was on the way people talked about government: "After June 6 there was less emphasis on tax reform and more on cutting back the tax burden, less on innovation and social justice and more on fiscal accountability, less on enrichment of programs and more on questioning their productivity".
The White House said it strongly supported the bill, and Mr. Bush reiterated his case today for an emphasis on tax cuts -- including repeal of the corporate minimum tax -- in assembling a recovery plan.
Though President Bush seems much less likely to do away with exchange funds, given his emphasis on tax cuts in general, it could become a bargaining chip to pass his $1.6 trillion tax package.
It's now sharpening into an argument between Labour's greater emphasis on tax increases as a weapon in reducing the deficit, and the Tories' renewed embrace of tax cutting (or at least cutting a tax increase that hasn't even come in yet).
Finally, Republicans are shifting their emphasis from tax cutting to fiscal rectitude.
Seventy-six percent want a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, with more emphasis on the former than the latter.
