Now that the chickens have come home to roost the Democrats need to get their act together to attempt to rectify so many disastrous policies, beginning with getting our military out of Iraq.

Tom

"events unravelled the myth of Bush as the wise and resolute leader who had somehow kept America safe despite the questionable nature of so many of his decisions"

I wholeheartedly agree with Ed Kilgore. In other words, reality gradually intruded on the GOP story line. The myths were quite popular, but they led to incompetent decisioons (copied from another thread):
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INCOMPETENCE! It's not Katrina OR Iraq, it is Katrina AND Iraq. Almost all Bush supporters applauded the invasion of Iraq, they believed that Cheney and Rumsfeld knew what they were doing. It is only the incompetence in Iraq that is lethal to Bush.

I can imagine a competent invasion of Iraq. The endpoint -- Sunnis completely disarmed, a religious Shiite strongman as leader elected by acclamation, would have satisfied most Bush supporters.

A competent response to Katrina is not hard to visualize. Likewise the many lesser hits Bush took -- Schaivo, the deficit, the Ports deal, Harriet Miers, jobs, gas prices, climate change, scandals -- we can imagine a competent response to each issue.

The GOP would still have strong majorities in Congress had they only been more competent. The US people seem to like conservative, even faith-based, policies in principle. They didn't reject the GOP policies, they rejected the leaders who could not make the policies work.

But of course I am skipping something essential! The GOP policies could never work! Because there is a fundamental contradiction between faith-based policies and competent action. By faith-based I mean the opposite of fact-based, the desired conclusion determines which facts are admissible. Competent action, on the other hand, requires understanding the facts first, before deciding the best response.

I don't know where any idea came from that Bush was 'wise', a wise guy maybe, but never wise. As for 'resolute', I think stubborn or obstinate are more appropriate descriptors. His characteristic that is often described as resolute developed from being pandered to and bailed out, in the face of failure, throughout his life. It has given him the mindset that if he waits long enough, something good will happen, and in fact, often does. The problem is that the good happens only for him, and there is usually a trail of wreckage for those associated with or dependent on him. Just look at his history of failed business ventures for examples. I don't see this as making that behavior one to be admired in a leader, even one as feckless as him.

 The best description of Bush's downfall might be:  the beautiful new robes were magnificent, admired by all.  But, the weather changed.  It got cooler.  The goosebumps sprouted and his skin took on a blue cast.  That finally got people's attention.

Hoppy in Sacramento

I feel pretty confident I can step outside the "we" and "us" of your post.  I have spent my life since my late teens fighting everything that Bush stands for.  I have worked for government.  I have taught people who work for the public.  I have openly opposed the mendacity of people like Bush in both the Republican and Democratic parties for over 30 years.  I am not sure how I could do much more without either specifically dedicating my life to this purpose or having some great epiphany and becoming a messianic leader.  So, I take no responsibility for the man.

Still, I take your point.  And, I will add, there are components of our culture that make his life easy.  The "post-modern" view of reality that confounds epistemology with ontology (how we know things with what the world is) is a perfect social fabric for evangelicalism.  Preacherizing make believe becomes reality in church.  Stumping make believe becomes reality in politics.  Isn't it funny that cold hard postivistic scientism is much more "liberal" than the newer fuzzier ways of thinking?  Why, its like we are in a throwback to  Medieval times!  Christian Crusades against the evil Muslims, fighting over Jerusalem!

Scares me, actually! 

I would rate that a 5 if I could!  I have been thinking, since it was suggested here months ago, that the Republican's best offense right now is to demonize Bush.  The more they can blame everything on Bush, the fewer consequences for their party.  Even during the past election I cringed at the amount of campaigning done against Bush, instead of against Republicans in general.  I understand it - Democrats want Republican votes too.  But, winning an off year Congressional election is not a major goal for me, and it has bothered me that we celebrated too much over our victory.  The goal is an 8 year term for a Democratic President, with a Democratic Congress, followed by at least a 4 year and preferably another 8 year repeat performance.  That can only happen if we turn voters against the Republican Party and its principles.  That should be easy to do, but only if we do it. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

I think Bill Clinton made a good point when he mentioned that the Democrats are both the liberal and conservative party in the United States. The tale of two cities model reinforces this notion. The reaction to Katrina, the failure to see the underlying problem of poverty, and the ignorance regarding Iraq, show an unwillingness to see the world as it really is; realism is the essence of conservativism.

Of course, I also believe the elections in '06 also constituted an overall rejection of the conservative agenda: Social Security phase-out, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, neoconservative foreign policy, and a religious extremism that led to an undue federal intervention into the lives of the Schiavo family and a veto of a bill allocating funding for stem cell research.

predictable blowback!!!!

Nobody predicted anything close to what happened in
the mid-terms. Not even Howard Dean, who implemented his strategy to contest every race not to take back the House and the Senate, but to rebuild party infrastructure.

But now Ed looks back, and sees it all as inevitable. This is ridiculous, of course. They chose Casey in PA because they thought Santorum was strong, not an inevitable victim of "blowback." They drove Hackett out of the race because they were trying to peel off conservative voters, and didn't want to speak clearly on Iraq.

They dismissed people as hopelessly left wing, deemed quixotic campaigns in red districts and continued to argue for dumping all resources into the fifteen closest races. By "closest" they often meant "races where the Dem candidate toed the DLC line." They didn't see this tidal wave coming, never mind recognized any "predictable blowback." Whether its because they're cynically pursuing a lucrative DC centered party, or because they think they are emulating Clinton's ability to find the center, these guys just have no clue. To NOW say, oh yeah, we knew it all along, is just laughable.

As to what caused the public to lose faith with Bush, Ed's right. It wasn't any one thing. It's kinda like Bogart and Mary Astor in the closing scenes of The Maltese Falcon. "Look at the number of them." For some it was the war. For others it was Katrina. But for everyone there was the accumulated evidence that it was all just a bunch of lies used to cover corruption and incompetence. I believe that Foley was the tipping point. The Republicans couldn't even be trusted to keep a dirty old GAY REPUBLICAN congressman away from the pages.

Foley wasn't the reason. Foley was the moment of clarity for people hoping against hope that they really weren't disgusting, lying incompetents.

I will certainly be filleted for saying so, but I have to think that an important component in the answer to your question is contained in your description of the problem; namely, religion.

Our anti-secular leaders taught us to hate the atheist Soviet Union -- and all communists -- even while they were saving our bacon in Europe in the early 40's. When our economic and military campaign against them succeeded, the political elite shifted the focus onto Islam.

Holy wars simplify recruitment and enhance public support. The invocation of a sacred cause bestows a mantle of rightness and promises victory certain: who can lose with Jesus at his side?

The United States of America is one of the most religious countries in the world, overwhelmingly Abrahamic. The beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the people of Abraham, all spring from the incredibly bellicose Old Testament. Is it any wonder that this combines with our ability to sustain military adventures to also make us the most warlike?

Bush is one of us all right. Not one of the best of us, but one of us without a doubt.

I find it hard to pinpoint the proverbial straw that broke that camel's back with respect to the changed fortunes of the GOP. But I do think I can recall what set the stage, and I go back to the press conference Bush held a day or two after his re-election in '04.

I had just returned from Orlando, having spent the election doing voter protection work as part of a team from the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, and the wounds were still very fresh. I specifically recall Bush coming in with that ever-present swagger in direct contravention of what I always tell my kids: that the only thing worse than a sore loser is a sore winner.

If you can recall that press conference, Bush came in and lectured to us about how he had acquired "political capital" and that he was "now going to spend it". That, I think, set the stage, because any prospect for national reconciliation and a spirit of bipartisanship was instantly obliterated by the arrogance he displayed on that day.

So I'm going out on a limb and will posit that it was that press conference, followed by events, that sowed the seeds for the current state of the GOP.

Kerry didn't have the force of personality to stand up in the public and say something like, "Look folks, this charlatan is scaring you on purpose, because he knows people stick with the leader they have, no matter how flawed, when they are scared enough."

This statement gave me the irresistible urge to say, "But Dean did, and he's been on the correct side of virtually all issues. Yet look what happened to him." Could it be that he's too far left to suit centrist American politics or politicos? He's certainly not too far left for me, but ...? Personally, I'm for Gore stepping into the next presidential race. I think he could win from all sides of the political landscape, and if he runs, he has so many good potential running mates to choose from! I would not be disappointed if he chose Dean, Feingold, Obama, Hillary, Edwards, Kerry, Clark, or almost anyone else, if he'll just run! Any of the above would be more competent than the current three stooges act that represents the republican party.

You skipped my other point:

"My uncharitable take is that Dems also like to play with smoke and mirrors, so they think it is unsportsmanlike to pull back the curtain on their opponent."

As long as we challenge the Repubs but not the Dems we will get nowhere. 

The fact that Kerry had the "second best" number of votes (Second! Yahoo!!!) or that you think Bush had "advantages" some of which were "illegal" simply proves my point -- that race was Kerry's to win. His poor performance lost it -- yes it was close, but he lost.

I believe political races today are won and lost with respect to the news media. Bush's team was much more media-savvy than Kerry's. In fact, Kerry's performance with respect to the news media was atrocious.

Re: why Kerry's mistatement mattered and Bush's didn't, I already addressed that. Kerry's indecisiveness was both what the GOP was pushing and what the news media had already accepted -- it played right into both their hands.

(For more on this kind of dynamic in the 2000 election, check out a book called "The Press Effect." Very insightful.)

And like I said, I don't know if an "anti-war" candidate would have brought in more votes. I do believe the *war* would have been more of an issue, and not "flip flopping," etc, etc. 

(PS -- I was fine with Kerry as a candidate when he was chosen. I was really an "anyone but Bush" voter, and believed any reasonable Dem candidate could have beaten Bush in 04. We knew plenty then about how the war was mismanaged, and how resources were taken from Afghanistan into Iraq, etc. ) 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Bush engaged in the always disasterous marketing device of overpromising and underperforming. Americans did not oppose the war in Iraq until they noticed that it was going to cost real money and the easy victory that was promised was not materializing. It is not as if Americans have become anti-war in general or oppose wiping out the nation's enemies.

All the grown-ups in foreign policy. All the business savy people in the cabinent did nothing but waste the country's money and accomplished nothing.

The power of the Clinton-Gore Administrations was their real skills at governance. They did not promise to end all manner of social malady but to make things better. They were willing to use force to protect the interests of the country. I gather Clinton wishes he had used force in Rwanda.

A Democratic who grasps Americans' desire to get things done and understands how to set things in motion will have a powerful message. This is not a country of pacifists or European Socialists. It tends to be a country of realists and moderate individualists. Bush wanted to beggar everyone while denigrating work and elevating incompetence. Standing up to this will get the Democrats into the White House.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Dean was taken out by big media in a cold and calculated way. He was not necessarily too left for the American public. They just never got the chance to decide -- he was pronounced DOA and few questioned that judgment.

News sources may now be decentered enough that this is harder to do, enough people will know that TV news took out the background noise that a candidate was shouting over (or whatever the featured equivalent trick of 2008, e.g., Gore is still wooden, featuring his stiffest possible sound bite).

I agree with your judgment on candidates, though I assume he would not pick Kerry or Clinton. If he doesn't run, I'd go with Edwards with Clark as VP. With Gore I'd prefer Obama for a little more zip and newness (and less need for foreign policy experience).

global citizen

Re: The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu, ~1000 BCE)
-- Various Sutras (Buddhist, ~1500 BCE)
-- The Analects (Confucianist, ~400 BCE)
-- The Book of the Dead (Egyptian polytheist, ~1500 BCE)

Sorry, but this does not work.
I am referring to religious texts from the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age, contemporary with the OT. That leaves Buddhism out entirely. The Buddha lived in the 6th century BC; the dates you give for the sutras are more than a millennium misdated.
Confucianism also is too late for this, belonging to the Age of Religious Revolution, which also included Lao Tzu (sp?), the Buddha, Mahaviro (of the Jains), the Hebrew Prophets, the Greek philosophers and, in some acounts, Zoroaster.
The Bhagavad Gita (which does qualify) is most certainly NOT free of war and violence: a large part of it conists of a dialogue between Krishna and a warrior-prince who is upset that he is going into battle aganst his in-laws (Krishna's advice: don't sweat it; they're your enemies, smite 'em good!) plus it includes tales about wars among the gods and so forth.
The Book of the Dead does qualify I suppose except that it is not a myth/story but rather a cycle of prayers and admonitions concerning the afterlife (where presumaly war is irrelevant). Other Egyptian tales were hardly short of war and bloodshed.
There's nothing whatsoever unique about early Middle Eastern religions (in which category Egypotian religion certainly falls too). All "civilized" religions of the era were chock full of war and battle and crime and, yes, sex and betrayals. Back then religion was not about uplifting humanity; it was just a glorificatiopn of real life, and real life for the ancients, dominated as they were by patriarchal warrior elites, could be pretty bloody.

Thank you Luigi!!

There are 3 or 4 threads running on TPMCafe right now full of armchair analysis on what George stubbed his toe on when he broke it.  Well it doesn't matter - Georgie's never, ever going to run for office again. But the Republican Party will.

We need to get over George Bush. The failures over the last 6 years were not just his, they were the expected results of a party that can't think and fears anyone who can. The core philosophy of the Republican Party, whether you're a flaming Jesus freak, a suppy-side moron, a member of the Michigan militia, or just a plain old-fashioned trailer trash bigot, is the same. This is the party that preaches that government is the root of all evil. There isn't a Republican who doesn't believe that gosple, it's the one article of faith that binds that party of simple-minded sociopaths together who otherwise couldn't be forced into the same room together at gun point.

It's no wonder they can't respond to a natural disaster like Katrina. It's no wonder they haven't a clue how to create a new government on the banks of the Euphrates. Go through the lists of all the screwups cataloged this week on TPMCafe and every one of them are what you'd expect from a party that preaches, and believes, that government is the enemy and their purpose is to abolish the one they have. And we need to hold them accountable for it.

And I don't mean Republican politicians. I mean your Republican next door neighbor. He deserves your contempt, don't hide it. Don't hide it from him, and don't hide it from yourself. Treat every Republican with the same contempt you feel for George Bush. GWB isn't just a "transient phenomonon", he's the best that that party could put forward and get elected. Karl Rove isn't some insect that crawled out from under a rock, he's your average main street Republican Chamber of Commerce member. Don Rumsfeld isn't a bull wearing a blindfold in a china closet, he's your average corporate executive. Dick Cheney isn't some evil mutant spawn of a cold winter night in a Wyoming sheep shed, he's the party's godfather!! And your neighbor needs to be held to account.....

No matter what happens in Iraq today, tomorrow, or in 2050, the IMMORAL policy happened in 2003.  No miracle will make Bush's war of aggression a moral war.  I look forward to the war crimes tribunal.

Pre-Iowa primary network news: Kerry and Edwards (98% positive); Dean (58% positive). Source: The Center for Media and Public Affairs

And who knows how much of that reporting was influenced by the mystery 527 hit squad, "Americans for Jobs & Healthcare."

It was stupid to say it that way, even though he explained his statement immediately afterward. But it wasn't as stupid as "I voted before the bill before I voted against it." An astute politician should know that there is no recovering from a statement like that.