Tough Time For Democrats

By Tina Brown
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page C01

The night before the announcement of Saddam's capture (round about the time that the tyrant was having a flashlight shone up his nose) I was at a media-heavy Manhattan dinner party that vividly dramatized the pre-spider hole mood. The guests -- mostly Democrats, with a smattering of moderate Republicans -- were unanimously kissing off Bush. It had been a particularly obnoxious week for a crowd that favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations: The Pentagon had displayed its upraised middle finger to France, Germany and Russia just as James Baker was due to leave for the Continent to romance the Euros into forgiving Iraq's debt. From appetizer to espresso, the guests bemoaned the administration's crudeness, incompetence and dangerous lack of diplomatic finesse.

Twelve hours later the same people looked at their Democratic choices for president and wanted to scream. It was no surprise to see Bush's poll numbers jump, but staggering how quickly even prominent Democrats around town declared their party to be toast. Any headway made by the candidates over long months of practice and message-honing was blown away in an instant by the mug shots of the shaggy perp from Tikrit, abetted by Baker's polished smile of success in Paris and Berlin.

Live-action heroism and a sinking sense that nice guys finish last have reduced the Democratic candidates to little more than the mannerisms that annoyed us in the first place. Lieberman, he of the censorious smile and jungle-book voice. Kerry, the talking tree with the '70s hair. Edwards, hopelessly puppyish at 50. Clark, cyborg hero of places no one can spell. Dean, no longer the exciting insurgent riding to glory on the Internet but a pisher with no past and no neck, poised to lead his party to angry defeat. Only Gephardt retained a certain Great Plains steadfastness; but the nation wants swords, not plowshares -- "Top Gun," not "It's a Wonderful Life."

Republicans have co-opted masculinity just when the media keep thinking such images are obsolete. The Fab 5 (of "Queer Eye" fame) exist only to change the straight guy's act, not his core. In California the Democrats still think Arnold won because of his celebrity, but as Berkeley professor George Lakoff, author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," pointed out to me last week in Los Angeles, Jay Leno is a celebrity, too, and he wouldn't have had a chance. Lakoff is a bearded, articulate progressive who has done a lot of work on the framing of winning issues. He stresses that Arnold was sponsored by Republican kingmakers because he's a fantasy figure who very clearly represents the strict, punishing father people turn to in times of fear.

American myths of masculinity draw on the strong, silent archetype -- John Wayne and Gary Cooper, later Charles Bronson and Charlton Heston, and more recently the subarticulate comic book action heroes like Sylvester Stallone and, yes, Ahnuld. American portraits of maleness have always favored instinct over intellect, action over reason. Rhett over Ashley. Patton over Marshall. Kirk over Spock. In this context, Bush's frat-boy past and Arnold's "playful" girl groping (never mind that it looks like creepy power-mongering when you really examine it) qualify as youthful expressions of the same testosterone that makes for grown-up action heroes. By comparison, Howard Dean's choleric outbursts look like Elmer Fudd spluttering, and the aristocratic let-us-reason-together authority of John Kerry comes across as lack of muscle tone.

"Good riddance" may not be a particularly eloquent thing for Bush to say about Saddam -- but comic-strip heroes don't have to be eloquent. In his interview with Diane Sawyer, Bush was like a guy in a sports bar, not much inclined to big-think. Dirty Harry doesn't talk much, and always in words of one syllable, but while the police commissioner is still fretting about getting a proper search warrant Harry has already offed the bad guy with his great big pistol.

The day after the Saddam news you could see Hillary Clinton in New York moving herself inexorably into the Democratic void in a policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations. More hawkish than Bush on the need to ramp up the troop numbers in Iraq, practical about the impending trouble next July when the possibly premature transfer of power follows troop reduction in the spring, shrewdly caring about the need to promote maternal care in Afghanistan, sure of her leonine power, she morphed her pinstripe pantsuit before our eyes into battle fatigues and flak jacket. Planted solidly behind the lectern with only intermittent reference to her notes she exuded the sense of a well-filled mind and life. Maybe not yet a credible commander-in-chief but at least a Democratic Major Barbara. Distantly one could hear the voice of Maggie Thatcher during the Gulf War in 1990, commanding Bush 41 not to "go wobbly." She will wait this one out. Self-discipline, not self-doubt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9689-2003Dec17?language=printer

Watch out for Hillary! She does sound as if she understands the nation's mood for action.

Eric The(OtherwisePleased)Hun