Senior moment: how America's biggest interest group misjudged its grassroots.

• Author: Roth, Zachary
• Position: 10 Miles Square

"I hope you get cancer and die, you little scumbag." Michael Naylor found that message on his voicemail when he walked into his Washington office one morning last November. It was an early sign that perhaps he and his organization had made a mistake.

A graying, bespectacled man with the pleasant, genial demeanor of a school-teacher, Naylor is the chief lobbyist for the AARP, the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons. A Republican-backed plan to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare had just been passed by Congress, after a crucial endorsement from AARP.

The endorsement drew howls of outrage from many Democrats and long-time AARP supporters. 20,000 AARP members quit the organization in disgust (although some ultimately decided merely to suspend their membership when given that option). And in an event that made national news, a group of retired, union members gathered outside AARP's massive headquarters on E Street and set fire to their membership cards.

When I met with Naylor a few weeks later, he pointed out that it was mining that day and that the cards are coated in plastic, making it next to impossible to actually burn them--but the demonstrators had made their point. "We went and invited them in," Naylor told me. "I said 'Look, we've got some coffee, why don't we sit down and discuss it?'" The demonstrators huddled with their leaders, then declined the offer. Congressional Democrats, longtime allies of AARP, have been no more conciliatory. 85 House Democrats publicly quit AARP or swore not to join, and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared that the organization was "in the pocket" of Republicans--quite an about-face for an organization that Trent Lott derided only last year as "a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party."

AARP leaders insist that endorsing the bill, and handing President Bush a huge legislative victory, was the right decision. The group's dues-paying members "wanted something to happen," says John Rother, AARP's director of policy. Aware that the chance wasn't likely to come again for the foreseeable future, the group wasn't going to walk away from the $400 billion that GOP leaders had put on the table. "It was our top legislative priority for five years," adds Rother.

The question, however, is whether AARP's members wanted this bill. The GOP legislation provides generous drug benefits for lower-income Americans who aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and...