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The Midterm Elections

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011
from: John Harris
to: Mark Halperin

I'm Still Not Concerned About "the Level of Vitriol"

Updated Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006, at 4:05 PM ET

Who are these people?

Dear Mark,

You do a nice job describing the freak show and its incentives toward extremism, as we outlined the concept in The Way To Win. But I fear you forgot to reread the final chapter, in which we concluded (or so I believed) that the polarizing—or, more charitably, clarifying—brand of politics practiced by Karl Rove and George W. Bush tends not to work well over the long haul.

A political strategy in which 50.1 percent of the county is inflamed on your behalf, but 49.9 percent is inflamed against you, is just too risky. It cannot sustain political setbacks. And it does not reconcile with the reality that a lot of people—at the end of the day, I'd say most people—do not want to approach politics as a nonstop holy war. They want to split the difference and get on with life. Clinton Politics, in which many important differences are blurred rather than clarified, may have less power, but it has more longevity. There is a reason he is known as "the Survivor."

To clarify: The Rove-Bush brand of politics is not synonymous with the freak show. I embrace your point (and now Todd Purdum's) that to see Rove as simply a practitioner of ruthless, negative politics (the "evil genius" thesis) is to miss many of the attributes that make him effective. If I did not believe that, I could hardly have written the book with you. But, as you point out, Rove is especially attuned to freak-show politics and how it can be used to discredit opponents, marginalize the Old Media, and advance conservative objectives. There is, of course, also a liberal freak show specializing in attack politics, but it is not (yet) as powerful.

So, what does all this have to do with 2006? Yes, freak-show politics are vividly in evidence, in lots of races around the country. Yes, there is a high "level of vitriol," as you say. But that does not mean that the freak show is the dominant factor in the election. Nor do I accept your point in earlier letters that the Old Media has fully succumbed to freakishness or abandoned its responsibilities to call out the worst of the extreme behavior.

The essence of a freak-show attack is that it does not really concern legitimate policy or character issues—it is aimed solely at branding an opponent as an unacceptable alternative. Lots of candidates have tried to do this during this election cycle. Has it been especially effective in many cases?

Maybe it has been in the Tennessee race with the notorious RNC "Harold, call me" ad. That was certainly a freak-show attack, aimed at destroying Harold Ford personally. Recent polls suggest that may be helping Bob Corker. (Though I still wonder whether it was as unambiguously racist as many critics believe. Surely anyone who is prone to vote against Ford because he is black already knew of his race and was planning to cast a racist vote before they saw the white Playboy bunny.)

But what about elsewhere? Michael Grunwald in the Washington Post had a good story last week about many of the most flamboyant freak-show attacks around the country. Most of them seemed like desperation tactics by likely losers. Ken Blackwell insinuated that Ted Strickland is in favor of man-boy love or something like that, but Blackwell is going to lose that race for Ohio governor by a mile.

Iraq, and the apparent failure of existing policy there, is the most important near-term issue facing the country. At the same time, it is the dominant factor in the election—never mind page scandals and allegations that a candidate strangled his mistress. So, that seems a pretty good example of democracy in action. I'm sorry if it is too messy from your vantage point at Nobu.

Just to remind you, the opposite of freak-show politics is not mushy, middle-of-the-road politics. It is a politics that deals forthrightly with reality and advances what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called "the search for remedy."

If it is middle-of-the-road politics you yearn for, however, there are plenty of examples this year that are also in the best David Gergen tradition. Look at lots of Western states. My favorite is Colorado, where Democrat Bill Ritter is winning the governor's race handily in a usually Republican state. You said I am not allowed to mention Joe Lieberman's success as an example, but you do not say why not.

As for your own exposures to the freak show, you have my sympathy. That blog entry was indeed quite irresponsible: Your father is not named Maurice, for heaven's sake. Where is the commitment to accuracy? But you know my view of the freak show, because I learned it from you. It should be marginalized. What incentives induced you to not follow your own advice?

One final point: Next time I am in New York, I would like to dine on Italian, not Japanese. Until then, I remain,

Your co-author and friend,
John

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011
from: John Harris
to: Mark Halperin

I'm Still Not Concerned About "the Level of Vitriol"

Updated Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006, at 4:05 PM ET
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Mark Halperin is the political director of ABC News and the founding editor of The Note. John F. Harris is the national politics editor of the Washington Post and the author of The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House. Halperin and Harris are co-authors of The Way To Win, a book about modern politics and presidential campaigns.
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