Forty miles of bad road...

Daniel Henninger, in OpinionJournal...

...Have you ever noticed how on a scale of one to 10, every untoward event in the life of the Bush presidency goes straight to a 10?

The Abu Ghraib photos? A 10 forever. Dick Cheney catching a hunting buddy with some birdshot? An instant 10. The Bush National Guard story? Total 10. How can it be that each downside event in this presidency greets the public at this one, screeching level of outrage and denunciation by the out-of-power party and a perpetually outraged media?...

That's sure the truth. Next week Harry Reid will be denouncing the "secrecy" of the administration because Dick Cheney didn't inform the press about his ingrown toenail. And we'll hear calls for impeachment because Scott McClellan got a bloody nose tossing a football with the President.

But Henninger thinks all this is a deliberate strategy, to build up a feeling of distaste and weariness for all the "troubles" that come with Republicans...

...No matter how voters feel on any one issue--terror, the courts, values--the Democrats, event after event, are building the feeling that the Bush-Cheney presidency and GOP Congress have somehow been 40 miles of bad road.

Can it work? Absent a 21st-century political vision, I think Democratic candidates will always be drawing to an inside straight. Creating a negative aura is easier than contending on discrete issues such as taxes. Yes, substance and ideas count in politics, but in many parts of American culture these days feelings and stereotypes are money. Why not make the public just want to throw in the towel on the Republican "experience"?...

Could it work? I'd like to think better of the American people, but my heart's been broken before.

One thing's for sure. There has rarely in our history been such a pathetic bunch of losers as these "Democrats" and leftists and peaceniks. They not only believe in nothing and have no positive plans or dreams, they seem to have given up even pretending to have any positive message.