One of the "he's lost touch" moments of Bush the elder was when he was confused about the price of milk. In the recent Massachusetts governor's race, independent Christy Mihos nailed the question, because he owns a chain of convenience stores. That's why a Washington Post story on how the milk lobby drove out competition and drove up prices is a meme that will be repeated and threepeated for years.

When you read the story, you realize that much of the deal making was Republican lawmaker Kyl of Arizona, and the story fails to explain both sides of the conflict clearly - there are, after all, free riders who take advantage of exposed price points. It's the perception that Reid participated in taking milk out of the mouths of babies that is going to be harmful, and something his office should be on top of responding to, before it becomes "conventional wisdom".

The world over, conservative business parties make agricultural subsidies, particularly for large agribusiness, a key item. Holding profits up, and costs firm, coupled with large cash payments, constitutes a significant fraction of the political support of the Liberal Demcoratic Party in Japan, the center-right parties in France, and the Republican Party here in the United States. Even when a program was created by socialists or liberals, it can easily be converted into a subsidy for those who are big farming.

The purpose of the depression era program was to keep milk prices up - at a time when they were spiralling down below the cost of production. Since milk is one of the most versatile of foods - as a beverage, an ingredient or as a raw material for other foods - keeping production of milk decentralized was part of keeping agriculture afloat.

Since then, however, it is not clear what roll it has been fulfilling, since the "family dairy" has been a dying breed - the one down the road from where I grew up was turned into a series of developments about 10 years ago. It is also not clear that consumers are well served by it. At the same time, there are significant questions whether the article misses explaining the importance of preventing free riders from cherry picking a controlled market.

But the questions of the complex world of agricultural economics are less in play with this article than perception. Even though the process was driven by Senator Kyl (R-Arizona), Reid makes it a headline issue for the Democrats coming in. Milk prices are something that working families know well, and plot their sense of whether food is cheap or dear by the cost of it. Even though the milk in question was sold to the relatively high end Costco - whose customer profile is upscale, the cost break spread through the system, since milk is very competive as a product once prices do start falling. For example, in 2003 milk prices plummeted leading large producers to talk about charging all dairy farmers per "hundred weight" of milk to buy up and slaughter cows. Smaller farmers, in part because of the MILC program subsidies, opposed the plan.

Thus, it is not as cut and dried as "lower prices good", because lower prices can push herds below the point of sustainability, and lead to higher prices when there is an acute shortage. Reducing volatility of prices can be as important as reducing any individual milk price. But people paying more for milk don't see things that way, and won't unless a program's benefits are made clear. Agricultural subisidies, bloated by the Republican series of failed agricultural experiments - they've tried everything from Thatcherism to socialism - will almost certainly need to be overhauled.

Either way, this is the kind of thing that people don't forgive or forget. Particularly when it is tied to campaign contributions and meetings. Why this didn't come out during the fall campaign when Kyl was up for reëlection is something that people better connected with the Washington Post will have to decide - but why they have framed it this way is less of an issue than how Senator Reid handles it in the context of legislation going forward.

We are going to see more of these - because to get anything done at all, many Democrats had to cut far less than optimal deals with the Republicans. This looks like one of them. With Democratic majorities taking control, making better deals has to be part of the MO of the new Congress.