This Media Life

Us and Dem

The theme of the race—in addition to how deep George Bush has dug himself into the White House—is the sputtering enmity that an element of the Democratic Party has for the president. It’s liar, liar, liar! stuff. Bush has changed the rules of politics in dark ways. The venom the Republican Party showered on Clinton must now, if there is justice, be turned back on Bush. It may not even be the war this antiwar group hates most. It’s Bush himself. He’s the insult.

This virulence has broken the Democratic Party into three almost formal parts, represented by Dean, Kerry, and Edwards (with Clark as the wild card).

In the first group, the Dean core, politics, which has not been an emotional sport for 30 years, has been turned back into a pitched battle. It’s righteous stuff.

But, creating the second group, this end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it tenor, this Bush-as-Antichrist (or, I suppose, pro-Christ) stuff, was finally bound to strain credulity, particularly among Democrats who have weathered quite a few Republican presidents. And in Iowa, fully 68 percent of the voters were over 45. Indeed, if you accept the relative inevitability of George Bush, you begin to make a psychic accommodation (27 percent of Iowa voters were 65 or older—at that age, you don’t want to be sour for another four years) to his reelection. You find a way to root against him without it being so personal. Hence, perhaps, the appeal of the Kerry remoteness. He’s the obvious antidote to the Dean heat.

In the third group, you have Democrats with a finer strategic sense (some of these Democrats aligned with Dean because he seemed to be the certain nominee). These Democrats understand that what happens now is most keenly relevant to what will be happening four years from now. That losing is as important as winning. And that how you lose is part of a larger process. Bush may likely win, but the field of play hardly stays the same. Among the present candidates and operatives, there are certainly those (although not, it seems, Howard Dean and his operatives) thinking beyond this race. No doubt it has crossed one or two candidates’ minds that the worst thing that could happen is actually to win the nomination—if you get trounced by Bush, you’ll have lost your career. And there are, of course, the would-be vice-presidents—you can lose as vice-president and still be left with a leg up. And there is the Hillary wing of the party already planning beyond Bush’s next four years.

This sense of the larger picture makes Iowa and the southern primary races perhaps most profoundly an Edwards story. He’s a comer. He’s the natural. And Kerry and Edwards are an obvious prospective match (it helps that Edwards goes out of his way not to attack anyone too hard). Edwards is surely gaining himself a future.

“Anything to change the story (the bushies, as major control freaks, would find this upsetting) Might upset bush’s march.”

For all practical purposes, the person the Democrats nominate ends up as Walter Mondale or Bob Dole or George McGovern or Barry Goldwater or Adlai Stevenson—which is not nothing. It’s a special political category: the star-crossed candidate up against the popular incumbent. You get to play a particular, albeit limited, historical role. It may take a certain type of person to truly play this part well, and I wonder if at some subconscious point the system doesn’t begin to seek out a worthy and estimable and even interesting loser.

Certainly, Dean seemed to be an expression of that kind of inclination. His was the enthusiasm of the experimental. The McGovern or Goldwater example. Sure he would lose, but grandly, meaningfully.

Kerry is a different kind of loser—less baggage. Less about a losing cause than about a losing style. He’s not a martyr. He may be the Democrats’ Dole. He could lose with grace and without angst. On the other hand (and here’s the rub), it is impossible not to have an upset like the Iowa upset—as entertaining and confounding and game-changing as that—and not begin to think about the possibility of other upsets just as disorienting and profound.

If Dean is toast (or toasted enough) to make this a suddenly and truly open race, not decided until the last moments (Terry McAuliffe and the Democratic Party bureaucrats’ plans to get a front-runner sooner is one of those efforts at corporate and media control that it is nice to see backfire), then the laws of drama alone might lend a new dynamic to the game. Dean’s anger may not have, as promised, brought into “the process” a whole new group of people, but not knowing the outcome surely helps make a bored audience a more attentive one.

If it’s Kerry followed by a suffering Dean and a strongish Clark this week in New Hampshire, with an Edwards win in South Carolina—this is a race.

And then there is Bush. How inevitable is inevitable, really?

His one potential flaw, it seems to me, is that he is depressing. The State of the Union was unyielding Christian dourness. He has set himself up as the medicine to take. The people around him—Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove—are also scary, no-fun, punishment-oriented guys. Now, it is true that in a time perceived—as the president always portrays it—as bleak and sick and demanding of retribution, his countenance and demeanor are money in the bank.

But, then again, if tone is what it’s about, then if you change the tone, you potentially change the, well, paradigm.

If the Democrats bring enough surprise to the various primaries to upset the expected outcome—to make the world seem like a surprising and giddy place—that represents a tonal change. Anything, it suggests, is possible.

If the Democrats stop being the mirror image of Bush (war/antiwar) and, with some clever diversion or two, propose something new to think about, a different, less depressing way of looking at the world, that might cause the Bush team some confusion.

Anything to disorient them is good.

Anything to change the story, to send it in an unexpected direction (the Bushies, as major control freaks, would find this upsetting), might undermine the march to reelection.

Bush, by force of tone and narrative, has turned himself into a necessary president—for which one must admire the art. But if you broke the spell with an altogether unexpected story line—and I find myself thinking that, after a series of upsets, the Democratic nominee is Edwards—the political world might become, if not quite crazy, at least interesting.