For reasons of balance, I guess, Newsweek decided to package its
"holy shit the GOP is screwed" feature with a
"hah hah, so are the Democrats" feature. But what was Howard Fineman breathing when he wrote this?
... it's incontestably true that the Democrats simply aren't blessed with much charisma in the leadership ranks--unless you consider Angelina Jolie a Democrat.
The GOP has Rudy, Colin, Arnold, McCain and Condi--just to name a few: big, bold, controversial characters. Good copy if nothing else. The more or less official roster of titular Democratic leaders includes Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and 2004 nominee John Kerry. `Nuff said.
I don't see how Fineman came up with this list unless he needed a graf bashing the Democrats' "charisma" and he hoped everyone would skip over it.
The Republicans' "leadership ranks" include a senator, a governor, a secretary of state, and two retired (for now) officials. That's a funny list of creds to pluck from a party that controls the House, Senate, and presidency. But no, the fact that the party's actual leadership is either anonymous (Hastert) or reeling (DeLay, Frist) is irrelevant on planet Fineman. As is the fact that if you compare their opposites in the Democrats - Pelosi, Reid - the Democrats come off rather well. And as is the march of current events. Arnold Schwarznegger's best days are apparently behind him - his
popularity in California is in the 30s, and in a month most (maybe all) of his ballot initiatives are going to be defeated for the first time in his career. Colin Powell left government in early 2005 with a lot less prestige than he came in with, recently
grousing to Barbara Walters about how he blew it on Iraq.
Rice, McCain and Giuliani are stars - Fineman has that much right. The latter two aren't running anything at the moment, but you can calculate their Q-ratings by how easily they can command media attention and how many calls they field for fundraising and campaign appearences by candidates in their party. Either of these criteria would have been guideposts for determining a real list of Democratic "leaders." The easiest pick would probably be Barack Obama, seen here:
That was the cover of Newsweek in January - maybe Fineman was off that month. Whatever - the point is, Obama has gotten such a rapturous reception from the media and so many requests (already) from Democrats to come and stump for them that leaving him off this kind of list has got to be an intentional mistake. There's also Bill Clinton - he doesn't have the Rudy ability to show up in any state and be popular, but he's popular enough in liberal or swing states. And obviously he can turn on any camera, any time.
The rest of Fineman's argument is so-so, but this little passage indicates, to me at least, that there's a hardened "the Democrats are sooo fucked" CW that the party will only start to dispel if it does really well in next month's VA, NJ, CA and NYC elections.