The New York Times reveals an interesting election-year-flip-flopping trend by the administration:

Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.

The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.

Whether they involve programs Mr. Bush supported or not, the grant announcements illustrate how the administration blends politics and policy, blurring the distinction between official business and campaign-related activities

[…]

In April, Secretary Thompson announced that the administration was awarding $3.1 million in grants to improve health care in rural areas of Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico and New York. He did not mention that the administration was trying to cut the same rural health program by 72 percent, to $11.1 million next year, from $39.6 million.

Mr. Thompson likewise recently boasted that the administration was awarding $16 million to 11 universities to train blacks and Hispanic Americans as doctors, dentists and pharmacists. But at the same time, the administration was urging Congress to abolish the program, on the ground that "private and corporate entities" could pay for training.

Now, if we assume for a moment that the White House is not inhabited by a pack of incontinent weasels, some rather startling inferences can be drawn from all this apparent duplicity. Maybe they think that their actual policies would never be whole-heartedly endorsed by the public; which would indicate either an arrogant, undemocratic meat-fisting of our social contract, or leadership. It can be hard to discern the difference. Maybe they're getting their messages mixed up because they're not talking to one another. Too busy fisting fighting truck-drivers terrorists perhaps?