The Democratic Party’s focus on the early presidential jockeying masks a key fact: Democrats won’t get a megaphone comparable to the GOP’s until they have a candidate in the spring of 2004, and during the 16 months between now and then, Republicans can make enormous changes in the political landscape. Two issues – prescription drugs and the federal workforce – suggest how fast this might happen and how much shrewder Republicans have become since the Gingrich era.

“Five years ago,” says Ed Gillespie, one of the party’s top lobbyists and strategists, “if someone had said, OK, the Republicans are going to capture the Senate and the House, what’s the first thing they’re going to do, I doubt many people would have said a prescription drug benefit for Medicare.

“But that’s what they’re going to do,” Gillespie told me.

Picture the domestic scene in January. President Bush will make prescription drugs for needy seniors a focal point in his State of the Union address. The Republican plan, focused on helping low-income seniors buy drug coverage from private insurers, will pass the House again. Then it will go to the Senate, where Democrats bottled it up last time.

Arcane Senate rules will govern whether Democrats can filibuster a plan they see as unacceptably cheap and too reliant on the private sector. But put aside the merits for a moment. Do Democrats really want to be cast as blocking a prescription drug plan for America’s neediest seniors? Do they really think that without the White House megaphone they can prevail with the argument that the GOP plan is not a “real” plan?

When Bush pounds the podium for a plan that harnesses the private sector and targets America’s neediest grandparents, it will sound entirely plausible, even as Democrats cry that the plan was written by Big Pharma to safeguard their evil price gouging. Whatever Democrats do – assent to the GOP measure as a down payment on a “real” plan or try to block it – the GOP could score a big political win.

Next, consider Bush’s headline-grabbing call to put 850,000 federal jobs up for bid against the private sector in the coming years. First a few facts: This idea builds on sensible “contracting out” efforts that Bill Clinton and Al Gore pursued themselves in the 1990s. We’re talking about work that isn’t “governmental” in nature – eyeglasses for the Navy or cafeteria service for federal agencies, for example, not the people doing maintenance on nuclear submarines. Also, though Bush is being disingenuous about it, this measure will do little to reduce the deficit or government spending since the vast bulk of federal outlays go for big entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

But, as with prescription drugs, consider the political dynamics. Federal employee unions, aghast at what Bush has proposed, are among the Democrats’ biggest interest groups and funders. So this is the choice Bush has given Democrats. They can toe the union line, and let Bush use his megaphone to cast Democrats as union pawns forcing taxpayers to pay above-market prices for everyday item like eyeglasses and cafeteria service, when everyone knows LensCrafters does as good a job for less (somehow I think Karl Rove already knows how this polls).

Or, Democrats can join in efforts to reduce unnecessary expense and undermine the intensity of one of their biggest supporters. At the White House, it’s “heads we win, tails you lose.”

So there’s your January preview: Republicans shouting that it’s high time we covered prescription drugs for needy seniors, and Democrats seeming to resist. Republicans crying, “Let’s save money by lowering the cost of common services bought by government,” while Democrats line up with their union pals to fleece taxpayers.

It’s been clear for ages, but every day brings more proof that when it comes to political savvy, this is not Bush’s father’s GOP. Democrats will truly have to find a new level of their game to compete.

Matt Miller is a syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is: mattino@worldnet.att.net.