• A Feb. 15, 1973, letter and accompanying document from Karl Rove (now President Bush’s top strategist) to Anne Armstrong, counselor to the president, thanking her for meeting with him and laying out his suggestions for a “1974 election program.” That prescription focused on “new federalism,” or the scaling back of the federal government and shifting of authority back to the states.
Except that Nixon’s “New Federalism” did just the opposite. By addicting state governments to Federal subsidies ostensibly for decentralization, they eventually started chewing on the stick affixed to that carrot, the stick being (to this day) ever-increasing Federal mandates about everything from the temperature of the soup to the size of the nuts, as a condition of the Federal money.
