Don't get me wrong, what Clarke is doing is important. And he's showing amazing honesty and courage to hold up against the onslaught.
But the underlying message may be one that causes long term damage for all of us. That's the all American citizens "us," not the Democrats who want to see Bush eat dirt "us." And Clarke's not the only one. Kerry is also triggering the same problem.
They're feeding the fear spiral.
We're seen it before. Last time, the spiral came on the topic of crime.
Politicians saw that there was no down-side to being "tough on crime." With the pressure all in one direction, each politician saw that the benefit was to be tougher than the other guy. This led to the kind of out of control arms race that brought twenty-year terms for pot possession and life sentences for stolen pizza. And we've ended up with states where more money is spent on jails than schools.
Now it's terrorism's turn.
The fear spiral is already well along. Hundreds of millions of dollars go up in smoke each time the ungainly new Homeland Security Department throws up a colored flag. We are spending billions, billions, x-raying our sneakers on the off chance that someone will attempt to emulate an ineffective idiot. In a period of months, we've eroded rights that took decades to win.
The problem with Clarke, and with the message that Kerry has occassionaly delivered from the stump, is that the discussion can easily be seen as a contest on who can be tougher on terrorism?
The risk here is that we will surrender more rights, and provide undue (unbelievable, unholy, and insupportable) levels of funding. As with crime, we'll go with flash over substance and end up bankrupting state, county, and federal government while making next to no dent in the problem.
Of course, Clarke and Kerry are not a patch on the Bush administration, which is now completely addicted to the fear spiral for its political survival. Bush cannot abide the idea that we might stop being afraid for one moment. If we did, we might start to make rational choices.
So how do we stop it? How do we stop helping them keep us afraid? How do we cut the fear spiral right here and now? How do we keep the spending and actions designed to defeat terrorism in reasonable bounds without making our candidate look like a wimp?
It's going to take more courage than even Richard Clarke has shown.