Last Saturday was Opening Day for fishermen in Pennsylvania. In some ways it was typical, if a little warmer than normal. Our newspapers were stolen from our paperbox around dawn, as happens every year on Opening Day. But you have no interest in that. The reason this year was memorable was the conversation my wife and I had with some conservatives we've known for a few years.
On Friday, one of my neighbors put on an all-night party by the banks of our stream. Like every year, he invited people on the road and friends from around the Lehigh Valley. Almost to a person they're conservatives, although I reckon a few are political Independents; fairly ordinary out-doors types. My wife and I don't fish, and this gang is always slightly bemused that we go down to hang out with them for a few hours. For one thing, we had those 'Kerry' signs two years ago.
This year something was up. Conversation rarely turns to anything serious, much less politics, at these parties. Yet that was virtually the only topic this year, for two whole hours. And, boy, it doesn't look good for George Bush in this slice of red America.
My neighbor remains a Bush loyalist, a Fox-News-watching, talking-point-spouting, die-hard disciple of the fighting-them-over-there-so-you-know-the-rest school. Whether they were old and outmoded, or thoroughly up to date talking points, he had them in his grip and wasn't letting go. But I was astounded to see that he was all alone now in supporting Bush and the Iraq War.
Worse, he was cut down point by point by others. The rebuttals were sharp, dismissive, and uncompromising. And, mostly, they weren't coming from me. No, his friends were cutting him down (while my wife methodically shot holes in his "facts"). In all that time, I heard nothing good said about either the administration or the Iraq War from anybody else. The mood toward both was pretty grim and angry, all the more striking in this drunken, convivial setting.
I also was a little surprised to see that everybody, including my neighbor, wanted to know what I thought about DC politics and the war. I was able to tell them about quite a few things they hadn't heard of (none of them gets their news on-line), and the more I told them, the more they wanted to hear more. A few minutes after I began ticking off some little-reported facts about the manipulation of intelligence before the war, I noticed that several people seated around the campfire were leaning forward in their chairs trying to catch every bit of it.
Sure, there's still a huge gap in awareness out there, about things we might take as common knowledge. But there's also a huge yearning to know, and to understand how things have gone so badly wrong.
Nobody at this party, except of course my neighbor, was anything but deeply pessimistic about the future of the Iraq war. One guy said flat out that our troops have lost the battle for hearts and minds by mistreating Iraqis, and not one person contradicted him.
Asked whether there was any way to prevent total chaos in Iraq, I said the only remotely plausible solutions were to withdraw quickly or to send in twice or three times as many troops. The reaction to my statements were rather interesting. At first a few people objected that a troop withdrawal would cause civil war, but they quickly admitted that the civil war already was going on anyway. I was even more surprised to hear that nobody thought sending more troops to Iraq was going to work at all. Even my neighbor was committed to the position that no further troops were necessary (since he maintains that we're winning the war already).
If this middle-of-the-night crowd, waiting for Opening Day, is any indication, there's plenty of opportunity for the Democrats to swamp the GOP in elections this year. Bush & Co. are seen as both incompetent and dishonest.
The main obstacle I see was voiced by the man sitting next to me, who (though he knows a good deal about the lies of the administration) said that he tries more and more just to ignore the news because it's so depressing. "You really can't do anything to fix things," he said, "besides voting I mean."
Democrats had better work to ensure that utter pessimism, the ultimate GOP weapon, does not decide the election this fall. If voters conclude that the government is run by hopeless incompetents, and there's nothing that ordinary citizens can do about it, the truly disaffected might just skip voting entirely. And so will our wrecking crew retain its death grip on the body politic for another two years.