We’ll need a little more than anger to win in 2004

Michael Tomasky has a terrific web-exclusive article online at The American Prospect’s website that I’d really recommend reading. It’s about why liberals should be angry, but why we’ll need more than anger to beat Bush and the GOP.

Though Tomasky doesn’t specify his inspiration, I’m fairly certain it was a recent article by David Brooks in the Weekly Standard, an influential conservative magazine.

Brooks’ point is that Dems have let their anger get the best of them. As he sees it, we’ve “gone off the cliff,” blinded by our disgust for the GOP and its right-win agenda.

“When conservatives look at the newspapers, they see liberal columnists who pick out every tiny piece of evidence or pseudo-evidence of Republican vileness, and then dwell on it and obsess over it until they have lost all perspective and succumbed to fevers of incoherent rage,” Brooks said. “They see Democratic primary voters who are so filled with hatred at George Bush and John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney that they are pulling their party far from the mainstream of American life. They see candidates who, instead of trying to quell the self-destructive fury, are playing to it.”

(Call me crazy, but isn’t this an almost exact description of the Republicans during the Clinton administration? Just asking.)

Tomasky acknowledges Brooks’ central point — the left is, indeed, furious. In fact, Tomasky does an excellent job of explaining in just four paragraphs how most Democrats view the last 10 years.

“After a long and in some ways well-earned stroll in the wilderness, Democrats finally elect one of their own to the presidency. He is a prodigiously talented man. He has flaws, to be sure, and some of them are important. But far more important is the way the rules of the game change upon his ascension. On election night, the nation’s leading Republican goes on television and snorts that the victory is illegitimate; from that point on, a campaign is waged to destroy — not tarnish or discredit or soften up, but destroy — the new president and his wife. This campaign has no precedent in American political history. (Please spare us the Alexander-Hamilton-and-his-mistress parallel; the 1790s are not parallel to today’s world, and Hamilton was attacked by one yellow journalist, not a network of operatives with tens of millions of dollars to spend.) Finally, he is caught in flagrante. Even then, the public asserts directly and repeatedly that it does not consider the offense a high crime or misdemeanor.

“But no matter. Against the clear will of the people, impeachment proceeds. It fails, but the hounding, again mostly over pseudo-scandals (like a West Wing ransacking) that never happened but are endlessly hyped by a frivolous media, continues. And in its way, this technique succeeds: What was objectively a bountiful and comparatively humane period in American history — prosperity, peace, low crime, reduced poverty, international goodwill; an era that should have demonstrated that Democrats knew how to run the country and left the GOP badly marginalized — is successfully tarnished.

“So the vice president seeks the presidency. He runs a soggy campaign, true. But again, it’s beyond dispute that the majority of Americans who go to the polls intend for him to be the president. Yet he loses — according to the rules, at least. But somehow the experience of the previous eight years has left us with the distinct feeling that, had the situation been reversed, other rules would have been found to ensure the same result. We are admonished to ‘get over it’ by people we know would not have gotten over it if things had gone the other way.

“The Republican takes over. For eight months, he convinces precious few who didn’t vote for him that he’s the man for the job. But then unprecedented tragedy occurs. Americans, the vast majority of liberals included, rally around their country; by and large we support War No. 1. We have serious reservations about War No. 2. But by now something more disturbing than a mere policy dispute has occurred. By now, simply asking questions, or refusing to accept the government’s assertions at face value, is denounced as something tantamount to treason. We find this, um, troubling: Open debate and vigorous dissent, we were raised to believe, were once considered the quintessential American values. Now, they are taken as prima facie evidence of anti-Americanism. (We note also how ardently the other side seemed to believe in vigorous dissent when its members were the dissenters.)”

That’s a pretty good summary. Tomasky doesn’t explain that we’re also pretty irate about Bush’s failed economic policies, his environmental record, his hostility for civil liberties, his disdain for our traditional international allies, his record of deceit on issues ranging from taxes to weapons of mass destruction, and his crusade to shape a right-wing federal judiciary, but it’s nevertheless a fair account of how many of us see political history in America since 1993.

Tomasky’s point, however, is that anger should not be an end unto itself, justified though it may be.

Successful campaigns appeal to voters’ sense of optimism and hope about the future. Dems can be filled with anger and scream until they’re red in the face, but undecided voters with no partisan allegiance won’t appreciate the passion of our convictions, they’ll just think, as David Brooks does, that we’ve lost it. As Tomasky put it, “Moderate voters don’t share our anger, and they’re more interested in hearing about what kind of country we want to make.”

True. The trick is crafting a strategy that directs the left’s frustration into a positive message that appeals to a broad audience. That, unfortunately, is no easy task.