President Bush gave a speech yesterday that picked up two of Senator Clinton’s favorite domestic policy proposals.

The first involves expanding high-speed access to the Internet in rural areas.

Senator Clinton boasts on her campaign Web site that “Since the beginning of her Senate career, Senator Clinton has worked to improve broadband access to rural and regional New York.”

Yesterday, Mr. Bush gave a speech in which he said, “I remember talking about access to information and there was always a group of people saying, that’s fine, big cities get it but rural people don’t. I’m talking about broadband technology to every corner of our country by the year 2007 with competition shortly thereafter.”

The second issue is electronic medical records.

Mrs. Clinton gave a speech on the topic on January 12, 2004. In remarks prepared for delivery then, she said, “We need to build an information technology infrastructure that enables information sharing. …Federal leadership is needed to encourage the adoption of health care information technology that promotes interoperability, assures affordability, and reduces barriers to IT adoption.” Mrs. Clinton also emphasized privacy. “Health privacy is the threshold question for me, and that will be written into any proposal I support,” she said.

Yesterday, Mr. Bush also spoke about the need for federal leadership in creating standards for sharing medical information electronically. “As you know, docs talk, like, different languages in different offices and there needs to be — in order to have uniformity, there needs to be standards available, and it’s a good role for the federal government, that will allow medical records such as x-rays and lab tests to be stored and sent electronically,” Mr. Bush said. And Mr. Bush, too, emphasized privacy. “Patients will have control over their privacy. I fully understand there’s a issue of privacy,” he said.

When President Clinton used to talk about matters like welfare reform, Republicans used to accuse him of “stealing”their issues. It’ll be interesting to see how Mrs. Clinton reacts to Mr. Bush’s policy proposals. Our own guess is that the lesson here is that Mrs. Clinton isn’t as left-wing as some Republicans demonize her as, and that Mr. Bush isn’t as right-wing as some Democrats — including Mrs. Clinton — at times demonize him as. The areas of overlap between the two main political parties in America are sometimes surprisingly large, as Ralph Nader never tires of reminding us. And it may be, too, that some ideas — like using technology to improve the economy of rural areas and improve the quality of health care while lowering costs — are so good that not even partisanship can prevent shrewd politicians of both parties from promoting them.