Sheesh. If Howard Dean tanking really means anger is out, no one has told book publishers. I dropped in to Seattle’s top independent bookstore today, the venerable Elliott Bay Book Company. It’s still a wonderful place - where you could easily spend hours browsing and buying.

But the prominent display of new “History” titles was a primal scream against Bush, Republicans and conservatives.

Beyond the latest screeds from Molly Ivins, Al Franken, Michael Moore, Paul Krugman, George Soros and Noam Chomsky, the new “history” books that were featured included:

“The I Hate Republicans Reader (Why The GOP Is Totally Wrong About Everything);”

“The Bush Haters Handbook: A Guide to the Most Appalling President of the Past 100 Years,” by Jack Huberman;

“The Lies of George Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception,” by David Corn;

“Bush Women: Tales of a Cynical Species,” by Laura Flanders;

“Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order,” by John Newhouse.

There were a few conservative titles in the same display: the Frum/Perle book, something by John Stossel, and Democrat Zell Miller’s excellent, “A National Party No More,” which I’ve discussed in an earlier post here, “Required Reading For Kerry.”

I can hear you saying, “so what do you expect in Seattle, anyway?” More important: how Democratic intellectual capital (is there such a thing anymore?) gets deployed. Titles and presentation matter. Applied to political opponents on the covers of books released by mainstream publishers, words like “hate,” “lies,” "totally wrong," “assault,” “appalling,” “cynical” and “imperial” betray the great frustration, and impotence of the liberal intelligentsia.

I’ll add here, too, that I tried to read a Bill O’Reilly book once, and couldn’t get too far - it was pompous, self-aggrandizing crud. Ann Coulter is another author on The Right who’s way over the top. And yes, there were plenty more book-length anti-Clinton polemics not too long ago. Moreover, I remember wearying greatly at the ceaseless conservative feeding frenzies over Clinton bimbo eruptions, the Starr Report, Vince Foster, Whitewater, and so forth.

But while today’s loyal opposition faces a steeper task than Republicans did in 2000, their motto appears to be “we can act even worse.” When does the payback cycle end? And is revenge better than winning? More than a few smart Democrats have observed that though Bush should be challenged on a range of policies, he has shown great personal conviction, and integrity in the face of unimagined adversity. Disagree with the guy, sure. But trashing him is plain stupid.

Maybe I’ll have to pick up the one other Democratic book in the whole gruesome display - besides Miller’s – that actually promised a constructive approach to beating Bush, James Carville’s, “Had Enough? A Handbook for Fighting Back.” I’d probably find a lot to disagree with, but at least Carville is about winning elections.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 30, 2004 10:56 PM

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