James Lileks

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Dems Are Mainstreaming the Extreme

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | If Al Gore had waited to endorse the post-nomination Howard Dean, he would have allied himself with the moderated, temperate Dean that will supposedly emerge once he gets a gravitas implant. Instead, Gore's wrapped himself around a guy who's still shoveling raw meat to the roaring disciples.

It reminds us that the Democrats of '04 aren't the hopeful Kennedyesque batch we saw in '00, when Gore rose to national prominence. They've gotten angrier. They can't crack a mike without mainstreaming fringe ideas.

The question is whether Gore gives the Dean wing legitimacy — or whether Dean's untrammeled rants will bring Gore down. Three random examples show the perils of Gore's embrace of the new New Democrats.

Item! John Kerry skillfully deploys the F-word in a Rolling Stone interview, wooing that coveted demographic of superannuated rockers looking for nekkid Britney pix. If you believe that civil language is a quaint Victorian hang-up unsuited to modern times, you're cheering Kerry. But he just guaranteed public discourse will get coarser and coarser, until voters wonder whether a man who doesn't curse like a hooker thinks he's better than the rest of us. Parents across the land say, "Thanks, John Kerry! Nice role-modeling, you blankety-blank!"

Item! Dennis Kucinich's Web site runs a music video that names the soldiers killed in Iraq, lists the companies involved in reconstruction, and asks how many more must die to enrich George W. Bush's cronies. It's pure tinfoil-beanie stuff, and its use of the dead soldiers' names is opportunistic and obscene. Imagine the stuck-pig peals we'd hear if Bush displayed a counter of the Iraqis who'd be dead today if we hadn't knocked over Saddam Hussein. Tagline: "If Howard Dean had been president, Iraqis would be tortured to death by their government today, and their graves never marked." The Voyager probe would pick up the howls of protest — even though the assertion would be true. Kucinich mainstreams conspiracy theories, and everyone shrugs.

Item! Dean, talking to Diane Rehm — the Mother Teresa of Beltway radio — excoriated Bush for undue privacy in the Sept. 11 investigation. It produced some "interesting" theories, Dean said, such as the idea that the Saudis warned Bush of the imminent attack. Very clever, this; it allowed Dean to move the charge from the fever swamps of Internet forums to the national spotlight. Did he believe it? Oh, no — but it's interesting, he said, and can't be disproved. OK, then: Dr. Dean sealed his gubernatorial records, and this makes some suspect he was an abortionist who sold the sundered remains to Satanists for Black Mass rituals. Hey, it's an interesting theory. Until we see the records, who knows?

All these items are part of a disquieting trend: the mainstreaming of the extreme. Think of the GOP at the peak of its pique in the '90s. The Republicans didn't nominate a ranter who trafficked in "interesting" theories about Bill Clinton whacking Vince Foster for discovering the family coke ring. They nominated decent old Bob Dole, America's Poster Dad for erectile dysfunction. The party's nut jobs seethed in the margins — which is why Bush could later win on the "Kinder-Gentler 2.0" program of compassionate conservatism. Republicans didn't want revenge so much as they wanted to win.

But the Democrats want revenge. For Florida. For Bush's refusal to let France and Germany decide American foreign policy. For invading poor, helpless, never-hurt-a-fly Iraq. For making the Dixie Chicks feel uncomfortable. Not for drilling in ANWR, but for wanting to. For this and a thousand other sins, Bush must pay — and if al-Qaida detonates a nuke in the Baltimore harbor during President Dean's term, it'll be Bush's fault for toppling the fascists of Iraq without the approval of Syria and China.

If Gore wants these people on his side in '08, it's because he thinks they'll still be spitting mad in four years. And he's right. They will be. They will hate Bush more than Osama bin Laden, right up until the day the Islamists target mixed-gender schools, abortion clinics and gay-rights counseling centers.

Then they might finally realize it's not only their war too — it always has been.

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JWR contributor James Lileks is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Comment by clicking here.