John's Blog

I'm just sitting there reading my morning paper, and drinking my coffee when I hear a story on TV stating that Caffeine limits blood flow to heart muscle during exercise. It seems like just about everything is bad for you, but the thought of denying myself my caffeine fix is more than I can take given the effects of withdrawal. I won't be much fun to be around if I don't have my day jump-started. Next thing you know, they'll be telling me that my morning NY Times isn't the paragon of journalistic integrity that I've always assumed it was. It looks like that's not working out too well, either.

But I'll stubbornly stick with both, just bearing in mind the potential risks. Today's comments by Maureen Dowd may be a case in point. She bashes Democrats for failing to deliver a message that resonates with the masses, and allowing themselves to be painted into a corner and made to appear as a bunch of wussies. Hardly fair to include Gore since his recent speech was finally on target, but it makes you ask where was this intensity and focus when we really needed it? Better late than never. Still she makes some valid points:

The Democrats were throwing haymakers at the White House this week, but they will never succeed as long as they're perceived as the party in skirts. Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration on its apparently bottomless store of imperial sins. They made a lot of good points. They just didn't score any. This trio, apparently jockeying for '08, are not the best messengers. They're loaded down with baggage.

Two of them, who could have stopped W. and Dick Cheney before they undid 230 years of American democracy, didn't, because they allowed themselves to be painted as girlie men. The other, a manly girl, has been so cautious and opportunistic about weighing in on everything from Schiavo to Alito and Iraq that when she finally sang out on Monday and railed against W., she sounded more soprano than basso profundo....

To lead, and not just conduct campaigns that parrot the liberal elite's editorial pages, you have to shape your own identity and political destiny. And ever since the 2000 race, the Democrats have let Republicans caricature them as effeminate. The Democrats have let the G.O.P. give them their shape, and it's an hourglass.

There are moments in campaigns and policy debates when it's possible to knock the sword out of your opponent's hand. Al Gore and John Kerry whiffed. Mr. Kerry and Senator Clinton held the president's coat as he rushed to war.

This all allowed the Bushies to use 9/11 as a shield and a bludgeon. They made their own rules and cast themselves as renegade heroes.

If the Democrats are like the dithering "Desperate Housewives," the Republicans have come across like the counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer on "24": fast with a gun, loose with the law, willing to torture in the name of protecting the nation. Except Jack Bauer is competent. The Democrats' chronic impotence led to the Republicans' reign of incompetence.

U.S. News & World Report features a menacing Dick Cheney - looking like a man who just swallowed a country - on the cover this week, with the headline "Tough Guy." The story recounts how Mr. Cheney, as Bush I's defense secretary, derided lawmakers as "a bunch of annoying gnats." Maybe that's why he doesn't feel the need to pay attention to those silly little laws they make.

How many things do you have to mess up in the country and the world before you lose your reputation for machismo?