Please, please check out "Stabbed in the Back: The Past and Future of a Right-Wing Myth" by Kevin Baker in the June issue of Harpers (not online currently). Besides exposing a good deal of GOP hypocrisy (we have plenty of examples of that already), it situates the Bush-era Republican political strategy (Democrats are undermining national security) into a rhetorical tradition dating back to the end of WWII.

For those who read it, you might use the comments to offer other interpretations than Baker's as to why the spell appears to be wearing off. (Baker suggests that without a draft, the public's investment in Iraq has waned.) I think his explanation is true but incomplete, and overly complacent to boot. We may be reaping the benefits of Republican incompetence at the moment, but national security appeals tinged or, indeed, saturated with the cultural chauvinism Baker describes so well have a way of coming back with force in election years.

We're not out of the woods just yet, in other words, but we have no right to select candidates who will assent to the hawks' vision, which has already caused so much destruction under the radar of American mass consciousness. The continuing electoral fragility of the Democrats presents all the more reason to study Baker's compiliation of the long-running, ugly, viscerally compelling GOP narrative of reactionary political fervor. I suspect this narrative mixes cynicism with a genuine but confused fear that it cannot tolerate, cannot respond to with rational security strategies alone, needs to dispel with the aid of more easily vanquished and assimilated foes -- to be found in tropes of feckless liberal elites. Doing so, however, detracts from the coherence and power of their thinking about actual national security threats, which is an important reason why the country needs progressive leadership. A more independent, thoughtful conservatism would also be an improvement, but given our damaged relations overseas and the divisions we face at home, it's really time for a smart, mature left of some variety to have its day.