ROAD KILL RAGE

Anger Management: Liberal anger is justified, but it won't win the election. (Michael Tomasky, 7/02/03, American Prospect)

Here, distilled into four paragraphs, is the liberal interpretation of 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.) In Georgia, a man (and sitting senator) who sacrificed his body for his country is labeled unpatriotic. The president has it well within his power, by simply uttering a few morally forceful sentences, to put an end to this madness. But the demonization of the other side is what keeps him afloat politically, and he refuses to do so -- and, in the Georgia instance, goes so far as to implicitly play along.

We need not dispute one word of that, just point out a concurrent set of facts, not "interpretations", which are surely contributing to the anger:

1992--Bill Clinton gets 43% of the popular vote

1994--Republican win a congressional landslide, including taking the House for the first time in 40 years

1996--Republicans hold the House for the first time since the twenties

2000--George W. Bush wins presidency, giving the GOP control over the White House and Congress (briefly) for the first time in 48 years

2002--Republicans win historic midterm victory, regaining the Senate and holding the House

So, over the last ten years the GOP has won back and now holds the House, Senate, and Presidency. Further, there is no plausible reason to believe that this situation will change over the next ten years. No wonder Democrats are angry. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 3, 2003 12:26 PM