Paul Krugman gets it. I'm just not sure that the two men he primarily writes about in his column get it. I will say this: Somebody had better get it. I know some of you are probably getting tired of me republishing my piece "Give Me That Old Time Liberalism" every 4 weeks. But I am going to keep doing it until somebody steps forward and truly starts leading America again.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe with an absolutely frightening certainty that America is in more danger today than at any time since the assassination of President Kennedy or the firing on Fort Sumter. That's right, a danger from within, not from without. We are teetering on a razor-sharp moment in time. Twice before when this nation faced those crucial moments, moments when our Republic could have disintegrated, spiraling in pieces past a point of no return, we were saved by that which separates us from every other nation on earth, our Constitution, the rule of law and ideals, not ideology.
And I am not talking about the little nit-picky kind of law so loved by nit-picky little minds, minds that are more concerned with whom we are sleeping, what we are smoking, what we are reading, what we are watching, than who we are and what we stand for in this world that really is looking to us for leadership even though it will mostly not voice it. The world will not voice it because it is so hard to reconcile what the documents and the monuments and the literature and so many of our movies and plays say we are with what the world sees that we are. And what do these less fortunate nations see? They see us out of fear belie those documents, those monuments, the literature, the great dramas that they want to believe are true but learn every day that they aren't. They learn this because they see that we are hysterically afraid of some new witch-doctor with ancient ideas that empower desperate young minds to blow themselves and us into body parts only because we are afraid and they see it and are empowered all the more. We are not hated for our ideals; we are hated because we do not live up to our ideals. It is a fact, folks, and no one is talking about it. This world would be a better, safer place in a heartbeat of time if we actually were what our great founders and writers and statesmen and thinkers and artists have so wonderfully but futilely said we were. You think about it. And read Paul Krugman.
In other words, the general gets it: he understands that America is facing what Kevin Phillips, in his remarkable new book, "American Dynasty," calls a "Machiavellian moment." Among other things, this tells us that General Clark and Howard Dean, whatever they may say in the heat of the nomination fight, are on the same side of the great Democratic divide.
Most political reporting on the Democratic race, it seems to me, has gotten it wrong. Some journalists do, of course, insist on trivializing the whole thing: what I dread most, in the event of an upset in Iowa, is the return of reporting about the political significance of John Kerry's hair.
But even those who refrain from turning political reporting into gossip have used the wrong categories. Again and again, one reads that it's about the left wing of the Democratic party versus the centrists; but Mr. Dean was a very centrist governor, and his policy proposals are not obviously more liberal than those of his rivals.
The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't.
What makes Mr. Dean seem radical aren't his policy positions but his willingness -- shared, we now know, by General Clark -- to take a hard line against the Bush administration. This horrifies some veterans of the Clinton years, who have nostalgic memories of elections that were won by emphasizing the positive. Indeed, George Bush's handlers have already made it clear that they intend to make his "optimism" -- as opposed to the negativism of his angry opponents -- a campaign theme. (Money-saving suggestion: let's cut directly to the scene where Mr. Bush dresses up as an astronaut, and skip the rest of his expensive, pointless -- but optimistic! -- Moon-base program.)
But even Bill Clinton couldn't run a successful Clinton-style campaign this year, for several reasons.
One is that the Democratic candidate, no matter how business-friendly, will not be able to get lots of corporate contributions, as Clinton did. In the Clinton era, a Democrat could still raise a lot of money from business, partly because there really are liberal businessmen, partly because donors wanted to hedge their bets. But these days the Republicans control all three branches of government and exercise that control ruthlessly. Even corporate types who have grave misgivings about the Bush administration -- a much larger group than you might think ? are afraid to give money to Democrats.
Another is that the Bush people really are Nixonian. The bogus security investigation over Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty," like the outing of Valerie Plame, shows the lengths they're willing to go to in intimidating their critics. (In the case of Paul O'Neill, alas, the intimidation seems to be working.) A mild-mannered, upbeat candidate would get eaten alive.
Finally, any Democrat has to expect not just severely slanted coverage from the fair and balanced Republican media, but asymmetric treatment even from the mainstream media. For example, some have said that the intense scrutiny of Mr. Dean's Vermont record is what every governor who runs for president faces. No, it isn't. I've looked at press coverage of questions surrounding Mr. Bush's tenure in Austin, like the investment of state university funds with Republican donors; he got a free pass during the 2000 campaign.
So what's the answer? A Democratic candidate will have a chance of winning only if he has an energized base, willing to contribute money in many small donations, willing to contribute their own time, willing to stand up for the candidate in the face of smear tactics and unfair coverage.
That doesn't mean that the Democratic candidate has to be a radical ? which is a good thing for the party, since all of the candidates are actually quite moderate. In fact, what the party needs is a candidate who inspires the base enough to get out the message that he isn't a radical ? and that Mr. Bush is.
