Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

Be sure to log on to our website www. Cato.org for a full archive of our

podcast as well as many other audio offerings.

This week the Cato Institute hosted a seminar in New York City.

Among the speakers was Wall Street Journal Political Columnist John Fund, who discussed what the

midterm elections mean for the new Congress and for the upcoming presidential race.

In today's podcast, he shares some of his thoughts on the defeats and victories of November 7th.

John, what mistakes do you think were made in this election?

The easy way to answer is where does one begin?

The mistakes were made mostly by the Republicans

and they began right after the 2004 election. I think President Bush deserves

credit for putting forward Social Security reform, but he blew the

marketing, never came up with a coherent plan, and soon lost the enthusiasm

and the confidence of Republican members of Congress.

So ultimately the plan was never presented to the Congress.

There was no vote taken.

It was a humiliating setback.

At the same time, the administration also

put forward immigration as a very important issue to solve

but ultimately it couldn't convince the republicans in congress

to go along with the plan the senate adopted

therefore there was no real vote taken on a comprehensive immigration plan in the

...