Political Memory

Ramesh Ponnuru responds to some of the critics of his contention that Medicare reform derailed the Republican Revolution (scroll down to "1995").

I pretty much agree with his rebuttal, but that's not what I find interesting about his post. Rather, what I find interesting is the extent to which people who really live and breathe and write politics remember things somewhat differently from people who dabble. I wonder if those who dabble don't begin to "remember" events through something of an ideological lens over time (for one, it's a betrayal of populist principles; for another, it's term limits), whereas those who seriously cover politics have a deeper, less ideologically refracted memory. Because everything Ponnuru writes about the POLITICS of the medicare issue as a trigger of sorts is dead on, although I barely remember it and probably would have also put forth an argument closer to the Reynolds formulation had Ponnuru not stimulated my memory.

Then again, there could be no relation at all. It could just be the case of good political memory by a sharp columnist.

[Posted at 21:26 CST on 03/26/02] [Link]