Can Democrats handle power better than Republicans? They didn’t the last time they held the administration and the majority in Congress.

Karl Rove dreamed of creating a “permanent Republican majority.” But as President Bush’s longtime adviser exits the Washington scene, the political landscape he helped chart is already shifting beneath his feet: The era of conservative values — a tight-fisted approach toward government aid to the poor, traditional positions on social issues and a belief in a muscular foreign policy — that emerged in the 1990s is coming to a close.

Disenchanted by the failures of the Bush administration, the public is moving away from its policies, values and ideology. This shift is an echo of the late 1960s, when weariness with the Vietnam War and discord at home resulted in a backlash against Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, and the late 1970s, when growing discontent over the stumbling performance of Jimmy Carter’s administration opened the door to the Reagan revolution.

This time, though, it appears to be the Democrats’ turn to reap the benefits.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center released the results of our comprehensive study of the public’s political and social values, the most recent in a series of reports dating to 1987. We found that many of the trends that had fueled the Republicans’ rise to political dominance over the past decade-plus have weakened — and in some cases even reversed.

Consider this: In 2002, the country was evenly divided along partisan lines — 43 percent of the public identified with the Republican Party or leaned toward it, while the same number said they were Democrats. That shift in affiliation was a historic change from most of the 20th century, when Democrats usually held sizable advantages over Republicans.

But if Rove hoped for a permanent majority, his hopes may have been dashed. Today, half the public — 50 percent — lines up with the Democratic Party, compared with 35 percent who align with the GOP. Even more striking is the public’s disenchantment with military muscle, a traditional GOP bailiwick. Today 49 percent think that military strength is the best way to ensure peace, the lowest level recorded for this question in the two decades that Pew has been conducting political values studies.

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