Bush inspires young Americans... to become Democrats

George W. Bush finally managed to do something to help his country, although he took a tragically circuitous route.

A new survey indicates the radical policies and rank incompetence of the Bush administration are driving young voters away from the Republican Party in droves.

Forty-four percent of 18-to-29-year-olds consider themselves Democrats, while 23 percent identify with the Republican Party, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. It wasn't always this way: President Ronald Reagan won 59 percent of the youth vote in his 1984 bid for a second term.

``It cannot help your party if you're a Republican to have had many people come of age in an administration that has so botched so many enterprises,'' said Michael O'Hanlon, director of Opportunity 08, a broad study of the electorate by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Issues

Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Washington-based Pew Research Center, which has done extensive polling of young voters, said the Bush administration's social- conservative positions don't resonate with those voters, who are more concerned about Iraq, global warming, health care and economic security.

The Republicans, he said, are finding it difficult ``to attract younger people who are not hung up on gay marriage and gay rights and immigration.''

A bittersweet victory, indeed. I would rather have a successful Republican president who unites America behind shared values and common goals than one who destroys much of his country on the way to destroying his party.