Blogosaurus

Joshua Micah Marshall tries to buck up the panicking Democrats about panic in the Kerry campaign:

Many folks look back and say Al Gore ran a terrible campaign. Maybe. Maybe not. For me, I look back and see something different. I remember a campaign that was far too sensitive to the spin and CW of the moment and thus capable of being buffeted by the smallest political squall.

Fair enough, except... isn't being "far too sensitive to the spin and CW of the moment" one definition of "running a terrible campaign?" Of, in fact, being a terrible candidate, with nothing more than a sense of entitlement as your reason for running?

You may regard the Bushies as evil, for all I know, and you may regard them as boundlessly cynical, willing to write any check to any interest group for power-- but when you say someone is evil and cynical, you give them the credit of knowing what they want and what they're for, because they're willing to do anything to get it.

Likewise, it's a revealing moment in Bob Woodward's The Agenda when Clinton reflects on the fairly conservative fiscal policies he's been forced into and says sarcastically and bitterly, "We're Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?" What it reveals to me is Clinton's insight that the job has taken over the vision-- that he knows he's just made a choice between what he wants to do and what it takes to stay in power, and he's not happy about it.

In both cases the cynicism reveals what there is beneath the cynicism that is being protected, or at least given up ruefully-- and that, in itself, makes it the man's core value. Does one feel that there's anything like that deep within John Kerry, that there's some private obsession (like tax cuts for the rich) that he desperately desires power to achieve? Or do you suspect that he only wants to be president because he's always wanted to be president-- and that if he'd grown up in a less tony social setting, as the son of a dentist rather than the son of a diplomat, finally becoming Grand Antler of the Greater Montana Quonset of the Ancient and Noble Order of Caribou would fulfill his psychological needs just as well?