The British magazine The Economist has a very pro-Bush (or at least pro-GOP ascendancy) columnist going by the handle Lexington. His new column, in the new issue, is all about how Howard Dean Will Destroy the Democrats. But there's something funny about it. (Read on for the answer.)
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3646089
Mr Dean thrives on the adulation of the party's hard-core activists. And he burned himself into the national consciousness as a tribune of the left. A man who said that Osama bin Laden should not be presumed guilty until after a fair trial is always going to be beyond the pale for many Americans. A man who opposed the Iraq war so trenchantly is always going to reinforce the idea that Democrats are soft on defence.
Jeez, you can almost hear the record player skipping, can't you?
Mr Dean recently summed up his appeal to the party's populists in a single sentence: "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organisation." ...
His former pollster, Paul Maslin, remembers him as a man whose "erratic judgment, loose tongue and overall stubbornness wore our spirits down". Other insiders note that Mr Dean's wired campaign was really the work of his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, who pointedly endorsed somebody else for the party chairmanship. As for the idea that "hatred of the Republicans and everything they stand for" is going to win over the exurbs, that beggars belief.
Hey, did you notice how he had to CHANGE THE QUOTE to make it sound worse than it was? From the obvious off-the-cuff "I hate the Republicans" to "hatred of the Republicans," which sounds like a mission statement.
Perhaps the New Democrats will turn out to have more fight left in them than they now appear to possess. Perhaps a charismatic centrist--Hillary Clinton, for example--will ride to the rescue. But at the moment it looks as if the Democrats are in exactly the same state as the British Labour Party was in after their 1987 defeat--in need of one more humiliation before it can come to its senses. If so, they have chosen the right man in Howard Dean.
Yadda yadda. Now, why do I say this is funny? Well, check out what the same columnist wrote ONE YEAR AGO.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2426498
Before the Dean boom the Democrats were beginning to look like a permanent minority party in the making: too timid to do anything but go along with the White House's grand schemes for eliminating taxation or democratising the Middle East. Mr Dean's mad-as-hell willingness to go for the Republican establishment proved that there was more to be gained from confrontation than from compromise. He spoke out for the millions of Americans who feel bullied by the brutal right: bullied by the Republican politicians who decry wasteful spending on welfare while stuffing their own supporters with pork, bullied by conservative talk-show hosts who claim to be "fair and balanced" while advancing a rigidly partisan agenda. Mr Dean was like the child who stands up to the school bully and gives him a bloody nose. It is thanks to him, more than anybody else, that the Democratic base is now as energised and optimistic as it was passive and pessimistic back in 2002.
Now, I am taking this partly out of context - the columnist's point was that Dean was a "safety valve," and that Democratic opposition to Bush was really "Bush hatred" that Dean let them vent and get over.
But doesn't this say everything about pundits and Dean? They hate him so much that he can only succeed when he fails, and only fail when he succeeds. And their prescription that the Democrats need to stop "hating Republicans" to succeed? You'd think at least one of them would remember the 2004 election ...