STILL PLUGGING AWAY

The clout of the Bushies may seem somewhat diminished these days, but they still more or less remember how to do one thing, and they're still trying to do it:

President George W. Bush today announced recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation's highest civil award....

Oscar Elias Biscet is a champion in the fight against tyranny and oppression. Despite being persecuted and imprisoned for his beliefs, he continues to advocate for a free Cuba in which the rights of all people are respected....

How many ways does this tap into old-style Rovian wedge-issue politics as we approach a presidential election? Well, Biscet (one of eight recipients of the medal this year) is not just an imprisoned opponent of the Castro regime, he's an imprisoned anti-abortion doctor who's an opponent of the Castro regime.

He's been in prison since 1999. So why the award now?

Well, it comes shortly after the a speech in which Bush denounced the Castro regime -- just a couple of reminders to Cubans in the electoral-vote-rich state of Florida that, hey, Republicans are your friends. The gesture to the anti-abortion crowd is also presumably meant to inspire their votes and their contributions.

An additional subtext is that Cuba is a dictatorship, so pay no attention to the universal health care (and, if possible, associate universal health care with dictatorship) -- a message that comes when Democratic presidential candidates are calling for universal coverage (and Sicko is just about to come out on DVD).

Oh, and some people would call Biscet the antithesis of a certain guy who shows up on T-shirts worn by dirty hippies. Here's National Review back in '04:

...Che Guevara remains an icon throughout much of America, and, indeed, the world.... His image adorns college dormitories and bookstores; Che t-shirts are ubiquitous at every antiwar march and anti-globalization protest. New books about the life of the "revolutionary" are published every year....

In contrast, only a handful of Americans have ever heard of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet. Like Che, Biscet is a physician. He's at least as photogenic. And his life story is arguably more compelling and inarguably more honorable. But don't expect posters of Biscet to grace campus bookstores. There probably won't be any movies about him, and definitely none attended by the glitterati. No college symposia will be dedicated to Biscet's political philosophy....

Of course, all of these messages are rather low-impact. Hardly anyone in America even knows this award is being given.

But turning everything into electoral wedge-issue politics, even ineffectually, is simple what the Bushies do. It's practically all they know how to do.