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President Bush was in town Friday to call Rep. Heather Wilson "an independent soul."

Wait, it gets funnier. He also praised her for supporting the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Really? Big Pharma helped write this bill, which - surprise! - legalizes Big Pharma's price-fixing.

Still, GOP conservatives (yes, a few survive) fought to kill Medicare Part D, however, because it cost too much. What they didn't know was the administration was lying on the numbers, suppressing - in violation of law - a new, higher estimate. The bill just squeezed by.

Part D does help some seniors pay for their pills, while lavishing welfare on insurance companies like AARP, Lovelace and Presbyterian, and sticking taxpayers with the check.

Now that I have you laughing (or crying), let's move right along: House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, backing the president on Iraq, explained, "Achieving victory is our only option."

Not funny, I fear. Boehner must know we'll be lucky to pull out with no helicopter-on-the-embassy-roof moment. And that our men in the White House have spent the lives of 2,500 young, trusting Americans to make more terrorists.

But I promised amusement. Here's a lollapalooza: The Democrats would do it differently. How's that for a knee-slapper?

Defying the grass-roots, Washington Democrats still hope to calculate, triangulate and bob and weave their way to 2008 - no matter how dire the state of the Union.

Consider: Corporate America calls the tune on taxes, environment, pensions, jobs - you name it. Collateral damage from the war that Dick Cheney's cabal foisted on us includes a tattered U.S. Constitution, blackened by secret surveillance, torture and American gulags. The economy is hollow, and our homeland as secure as New Orleans was.

Happily, if belatedly, Americans are catching on. Pollsters find less than 40 percent approving the president's performance; ergo, Main Street Republicans now reject Big Government spendthrifts. Some religious rightists, too, might have grasped how Karl Rove uses them.

As the GOP coalition crumbles, you would expect Democrats to offer new policies. And you would be wrong.

Sen. Hillary Clinton still backs the war, while flaunting a new contributor - Rupert Murdoch. Get it? She's tough and no liberal. Gov. Bill Richardson insists on TV that he's a tax-cutter, too. The bravery!

Democrats bottle themselves as Republican Lite for fear voters will reject their beliefs. They believe in triangulation - identifying a political middle and telling folks there what Democrats think they want to hear. No matter that Al Gore and John Kerry triangulated down the tubes.

But Americans dislike shape-shifters. Even I - no fan of Bush - admired his stubborn, poll-defying effort to kill Social Security, fueled by the belief, I guess, that we should all earn our own fortunes as he did - by picking wealthy parents. Huh?

In politics, as in life, fear breeds failure. Risk based on conviction sometimes works. Take health care. Universal insurance makes sense; we'll get it the day Wal-Mart and General Motors tire of their health care burden.

Meanwhile, Democrats should try to repeal Part D, enacting a modest version, and expand Medicare to those in their 50s. They should also advocate the public financing of elections. This will outrage George Will and all who now lease or buy political influence. Americans nostalgic for democracy, however, will eventually awake and sing.

Or not. Maybe the Democrats should keep triangulating. What's wrong with both parties taking turns serving Corporate America in the Enron Memorial White House?

Sorry. This isn't funny anymore. Probably never was.

Alpert, a semiretired Albuquerque journalist, may be reached at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears the fourth Thursday of the month.