James's addiction: Carville can't stop giving the Democrats good advice

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2003 by Jamie Malanowski

James Carville, a political consultant in real life who, oddly enough, also plays one on TV, has written a new book called Had Enough? A Handbook For Fighting Back. Apart from its cover, on which a black-eyed, band-aided yet still pugnacious Carville looks too much like a rough trade pinup boy, Had Enough? is a brilliant book, essential reading for anybody interested in the preservation of our democratic institutions. Nowhere in the book is his insight and acumen better demonstrated than in the passage where he advises those who share his philosophy to "arm yourself with facts and counter-arguments. There are a lot of places to do this, but as far as I'm concerned, the progressive must-read is a magazine called The Washington Monthly." Well said, Mr. Carville!

Now, while my editor goes out to buy some marble and a chisel, I will continue with the review.

Carville's greatest claim to fame, of course, is that he was Bill Clinton's campaign manager in 1992, a year when at first it seemed that the greatest stature a Democratic nominee could hope to achieve was to be the answer to a medium-hard "Jeopardy" question. Instead, Clinton was able to attack the first President Bush by framing issues in ways that made it seem that Clinton was in touch with our problems, and that Bush either didn't care, or was their author. So armed, Clinton smote the incumbent. It didn't hurt that the country was swaying through the aftershocks of a recession; but please recall that four years earlier when there were reasons to think that the Democrats were due for a victory, they responded to these favorable auguries by nominating Mr. Competence, not Mr. Ideology, and lost.

Clinton talked so much in that campaign that it is difficult to believe he was ever scripted; still, his ability to discuss issues and Carville's knack for framing them surely complemented one another. Reading Had Enough?, one can't help hearing the arguments made not in Carville's Cajun accent, but in Clinton's husky drawl. It's like looking at the sheet music of a song written by Cole Porter or Jerome Kern, and hearing Sinatra singing it in your head. One wonders what the 2004 political landscape would look like if a virtuoso candidate like Clinton were in the field, equipped with Carville's arrangements. Whatever virtues the Democratic candidates possess, when it comes to selling an issue, none of them is even Jerry Vale.

Had Enough? is a handbook for Democrats, one that can be used everywhere, from classrooms and church socials to the sets of the Fox News Network and beyond, yea onto the very campaign trail itself. It's interesting that he lards the book with homespun stories of his upbringing in Louisiana, because his philosophy of politics and government is very much a communitybased approach writ large. Carville's public persona is that of a tough, sarcastic, combative, high-stakes sharpie, but underneath, he is really that familiar mainstay of most communities, the volunteer fireman, PTA member, money raiser for the new Little League field.

Carville's approach--his doctrine and battle plan--is let's be fair, let's look out for the little guy, and let's roll up our sleeves and chip in some money to invest in a better tomorrow: It's a useful approach for people who want to be Democratic standard-bearers. In most of the elections of the last quarter century, the American public has elected the man whom they could envision comfortably explaining policy in the local barbershop, and not the pointy-headed intellectual or sharp Washington insider (or, in the case of some recent Democratic nominees, both).

The most interesting aspect of this book, then, is not how many arguments Carville throws against Republican positions, but the number of these arguments that are in fact attacks on big business. On issues involving health care, energy, the environment, tort reform, and taxes, Carville criticizes Republican positions because they protect and defend business practices that ate not fair, don't look out for the little guy, and give to rich people the resources that could be used to invest in a better tomorrow. "Today corporations are the great threat to citizen power," Carville writes. "They have the ability to abuse employees, shareholders, customers, neighbors and the environment. The only force powerful enough to stop that abuse is government, which is why rich people and corporations want to shrink our government or own it. Republicans are helping them do both."

This is something new: a harsher tone, and a more explicit critique of business. The years since the election of Ronald Reagan have been strongly pro-business. Taxes have been cut, free trade has been promoted, and the growth of pension funds and 401(k) plans have turned millions of people into shareholders. Business executives, starting with Lee Iacocca and Ted Turner, enjoyed a new kind of celebrity; some, like Steve Jobs, were even hip. Both political parties cast themselves as pro-business: the Republicans by nature, the Democrats out of the realization that they had strayed too far into anti-business positions and needed to adapt. Bill Clinton and Al Gore specifically ran as pro-business New Democrats.