Putting the “Angry Ape” Back in Its Cage

Last night, Kevin Drum lamented the long-standing Democratic “national security dilemma”:

The reason we can’t defund the war is because Dems in swing districts think they’ll lose their seats if a Republican opponent can club them over the head next year with a 24/7 barrage of grainy black-and-white commercials accusing them of not supporting our troops. Ditto for FISA, Kyl-Lieberman, the “General Betray-us” ad, shutting down Guantanamo, the Military Commissions Act, and a host of other related issues.

Matt Yglesias responded:

Democratic efforts to hug the GOP on security and fight elections on other issues didn’t pay much in the way of dividends when they were tried. . . . If the people advising the party on how to win elections don’t think it’s possible to craft compelling speeches, sound bites, advertisements, etc. around liberal views on national security policy, then someone needs to fire all of those people and hire some new people who are willing to give it a shot.

. . . Yesterday, Tyler Cowen revealed his Angry Ape Theory of American politics: “Under this theory foreign policy disasters, no matter who caused them, will help the Republican candidate. We will demand An Angrier Ape.” That theory may or may not be correct, but the last thing you need is for Democratic political strategy to be framed by people who think it’s correct. That just guarantees loss. You need to find people who think they can persuade the public that an Angry Ape isn’t the way to go and let those people have a crack at it.

Well, hello, Messrs. Yglesias and Drum, and welcome to where I was last week (and for much of the past two years, for that matter):

. . Democrats need to engage in a wholehearted, full-tilt effort to redefine themselves as the party that knows the best way to defend the country. It’s ridiculously easy, with Iraq offering one-sentence proof that the Bushite path is the wrong one. Indeed, John Edwards’ speech in September was an excellent example of how to make the case.

Contrast this with Atrios, who wrongly thinks “The way to deal with this is get out and front and explain that giving immunity to AT&T does not, in fact, have anything to do with the safety of your children.” But the fact is, the Congresscritters who are afraid of those 30-second ads don’t believe anyone’s going to sit still and listen long enough to grasp a rational argument like that.

This is a matter that has to be dealt with thematically, and through repetition. The formula, as I suggest in the posts linked above (and in numerous other posts since almost two years ago), is so basic it’s almost childlike:

1. Take a Very Bad Thing that happened with regard to national security (namely, Iraq).
2. Ascribe this Very Bad Thing to a mindset associated with the other party.
3. Describe the different mindset your party has, and assert that this will defend the country better.
4. Repeat daily, using your party’s more effective mindset as the reason for your stand on Issue of the Day X.

If this sounds familiar to you, that’s because it’s what Republicans do every day (using September 11th as the Very Bad Thing instead of Iraq) — and by “every day,” I mean today, for example. Indeed, it’s the very approach that has congressional Democrats scurrying for cover on a regular basis, on all the issues that Kevin Drum cites.

Not only that, the power of the Iraq debacle as a tool for turning the presumption of national-security superiority has been demonstrated by numerous polls (including, not least, the November ‘06 elections where the Democrats recaptured both houses of Congress) even in the absence of any explicit narrative effort. In short, Americans are so desperate for an alternative philosophical approach for defending the country that they’ve given the Dems the benefit of the doubt on faith alone.

And yet the Democratic powers that be seem to find it literally inconceivable that an effective party-wide message could be built on this foundation — namely, defending the country based on a mindset of moral principles, common sense, and what works, instead of what sounds tough — even as the GOP continues beating them over the head every day with their increasingly threadbare version.

Heck, even some of our brightest progressive bloggers (including Atrios, K-Drum, and Matt Y.) seem to have trouble grasping the concept. But I’ll keep ranting in the wilderness, I guess, until folks bother to figure it out.

(Photo via funkypancake.)

Related posts:

1. Cage Match: BillO and the Homewrecker versus Alan Grayson!
2. Late Night: Why Are Conservatives Angry? Because Keeping Conservatives Angry Makes Fox News Rich
3. Putting America Back to Work: What a Principled Government Would Do
4. This Just In: Angry Crazies Can’t Get Along With Other Angry Crazies
5. “Certain Officers”: Putting Reyes, Panetta, HPSCI Democrats, and 2 + 2 Together