If you look at the present scene, you have to think: both political parties have seen better days.
President George Bush and his group have made (literally) careers out of being the anti-Democrats, the anti-liberals. The Democrats have been quiet through some of the recent political turbulence hitting the White House, seemingly hoping not to mess up a good thing (GOPers sniping at the White House, tumbling poll numbers for GWB).
But is this ENOUGH for both parties? To wit:
Yet another poll shows George Bush is inching into troubled waters — this time with his own supporters.
Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in President Bush’s political coalition are worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found….
“Politically, this is very serious for the president,” said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. “If the base of his party has lost faith, that could spell trouble for his policy agenda and for the party generally.”
Duh…More:
Sentiment about the nation’s direction has sunk to new depths at a time people are anxious about Iraq, the economy, gas prices and the management of billions of dollars being spent for recovery from the nation’s worst natural disaster.
Only 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction while two-thirds, 66 percent, say it is on the wrong track, the poll found….
Among those most likely to have lost confidence about the nation’s direction over the past year are white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points since November, Republican women, down 28 points, Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20 points.
Bush’s supporters are uneasy about issues such as federal deficits, immigration and his latest nomination for the Supreme Court. Social conservatives are concerned about his choice of Miers, a relatively unknown lawyer who has most recently served as White House counsel.
Now the question becomes: will Bush try to rally his base by hitting the polarization button (there are already suggestions he WILL) and turning it into us-against-them? But will that be enough this time, given the number of crises in which the White House came out smelling less like a rose — and more like fertilizer?
And the Democrats? Are they smart in bascially sitting pretty to capitalize on a White House that seemingly fumbles these days as much as a football team without hands?
Not really, points out Clinton’s former political guru and “war room” general James Carville:
The problem with Democrat campaign speeches is “litany,� and they need more narrative like Winnie the Pooh stories, political consultant and pundit James Carville said.
At a speech sponsored by the Northwestern College Democrats Thursday evening, Carville told the audience that Democratic candidates can’t succeed by shouting out to every group in a crowd. Instead candidates should tell stories with the three elements of any good story — setup, conflict and resolution.
“No Kumbayah crap,� Carville said.
Carville’s comments are sure to earn him angry denunciations from the Democratic party’s left, but he’s right.
The Democrats’ problem is that they seem to feel they can sit back and watch the administration self-destruct (big mistake). Part of the Democrat’s disorganization (is Bob Shrum out there advising party leaders?) is due to the party being split between those who want to get tough on the Republicans and campaign hard on the left to offer a more clear-cut alternative to GOP rule and and those who feel the Democrats need to appeal to the center and pick up some independent and Republican moderate (they do exist) votes.
As Carville notes, a cohesive message never hurt. And those Democrats who act as if the good ‘ol days were the days of McGovern are just about as appealing to many people as those Republicans who feel the good ‘ol days were before that hyperactive bum Theodore Roosevelt just had to come in and undo the work Mark Hanna did with big-business-sweetheart President William McKinley.
Carville (who is not a favorite of some on the left these days) also offered some other observations, such as:
… Democrats need to learn that a candidate who can’t campaign can’t succeed.
“If you’re not competent in campaigns, you don’t have a chance to be competent in government,� he said.
Using Al Gore as an example, Carville said being a smart candidate is not enough.
“It’s actually possible to be wise, right and strong,� he said.
But, Carville added, no one in Washington likes anyone who is right too often. Howard Dean’s accurate assessment about the failure of the war in Iraq helped kick him out of the running for president despite his passion, Carville said.
Yes. No one likes a donkey who think he knows everything; no one likes a smart ass…MORE:
In the same way that intelligence and accuracy can’t stand alone, strength without accuracy is a catastrophe, he said. His example: the Republican administration.
“If we just had mediocracy I’d be the happiest person in the world,� Carville said. “You put political hacks in an important position and there are consequences.�
But his main message was that the Democrats’ messages are just too diffuse:
If Democrats try to single out every issue, they’re back to litany, Carville said. He also said Democrats just can’t say “no� to causes from gay rights to abortion to the poor.
“Sometimes the problem with being a Democrat is being a Democrat,� he said.
An administration that has problems with its supporters due to poor performance in some critical areas, questionable decisions and “hubris” because for too long its main mantra has been “trust me” — and many people unquestionably did. Now they’re being questioned.
And a Democratic party that is running around in many directions but unable to articulate as well or courageously as traditional GOP conservatives is the main sticking point with the Harriet Miers nomination: if she is the best-qualified person in the whole country that Bush could find, then Pauly Shore has had a string of smash hit movies.
Bush’s numbers are down among his supporters. Many traditional conservatives won’t fall on their sword for their party. And the largely silent Democrats won’t fall on their sword for principle (because, after all, Harriet Miers might not try to overturn Roe Versus Wade — which as we know is the only issue at play here).
UPDATE: Miers’ nomination has now been blasted by an icon of traditional conseratives — Robert Bork, the man whose defeat at the hands of Democrats when he was nominated for the Supreme Court became a battlecry for conservatives.
Bork is less-than-impressed with the nomination, which he labels a “disaster” in an interview with MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson:
JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FORMER SUPREME COURT NOMINEE:….I think it’s a disaster on every level.
CARLSON: Why? Explain the levels on which it’s a disaster.
BORK: Well, the first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever. Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. So that — I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by. I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.
But the other level is more worrisome, in a way: it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.
It’s odd that Justice Roberts, who is now the chief justice, and who will probably be an excellent choice in many ways, also had no track record that was easy to follow.
UPDATE II: Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit has the best upsummer quote on this one:
Hugh Hewitt thinks this is a case of the right-blogosphere having too much influence, and acting too hastily. I think, though, that it’s a case of the Bush Administration pushing an underwhelming nominee without thinking about how it would play. My own problem isn’t that of people like Bork — the fear that Miers would be too liberal on social issues. To me, that would be a plus. My problem is that there’s no particular reason to think she’d be a good Supreme Court Justice. The Bush Administration should have had a lot of those reasons handy before nominating someone who was sure to raise those kinds of questions.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.