Thanks mainly to Kevin Drum, last week was “Before the Storm” Week in parts of the blogosphere, with a lot of people weighing in on the genius of Rick Perlstein’s 2001 book about the early days of the conservative movement, culminating in the Goldwater candidacy of 1964.Perlstein’s book has been on my reading list for a while, but keeps getting bumped down to the second tier, not because of any misgivings I have about his widely acclaimed brilliance in recounting the events of those days, but simply because I sorta kinda lived through this in detail and prefer to spend my limited reading time on stuff I don’t know much about.As the most obsessive little political junkie you’d ever want to avoid in the early 60’s, I paid a lot of attention to the Goldwater movement at the time, and in ensuing years, read a lot about its antecedents: the early National Review, the Sharon Statement, the rightward tilt of the YR’s, the YAF, the Democrats-for-Goldwater, the Cliff White organization–the whole enchilada. I’m sure Perlstein has important insights about these phenomena that would never occur to me, but right now my top priority is reading Ted Widmer’s new biography of Martin Van Buren, who basically founded the Democratic Party.I do find the Democratic blogospheric debate over the Goldwater campaign, via Perlstein (nicely sliced and diced by Mark Schmitt), fascinating and sometimes horrifying.The idea that today’s Democrats should model themselves on Goldwater Republicans is by any standard, well, a bit nuts. They lost spectacularly in 1964, losing states like Vermont and Kansas that Republicans never lost, by big margins. They destroyed an African-American GOP vote that had been there since Lincoln. That was hard, but they accomplished it. They discredited conservative opposition to the Great Society, which had tangible results in the four years after Goldwater’s nomination. And the magnitude of the loss marginalized movement conservatives in the Republican Party for a long time.A number of participants in the blogospheric discussion of Perlstein’s book note that some of liberalism’s most notable victories occurred under Richard Nixon, particularly the enactment of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the first major federal affirmative action program. But Nixon’s most important insults to the conservative movement were his wage and price controls–a truly satanic posture in the eyes of market conservatives–and his repudiation of Taiwan in the recognition of mainland China, which struck at one of the most emotional and original heart-throbs of the pre-Goldwater and Goldwater Right.The chronic estrangement of movement conservatives from the GOP after 1964 has been understated by many Left and Right enthusiasts.They often forget Reagan’s insurgent effort to forge an anti-Nixon alliance with Nelson Rockefeller at the 1968 GOP Convention. They rarely know about the 1971 manifesto by conservatives (led by William F. Buckley) deploring detente with the Soviet Union, which nakedly offered to support a Democrat like Scoop Jackson in 1972. And nobody seems to remember the period after Reagan’s failed 1976 campaign, when National Review’s publisher, William Rusher, was promoting a “Producers’ Party” that would combine Republican conservatives with Wallacite Democratic conservatives.Mark Schmitt’s comments on the subject nail one point entirely: that the main lesson Republicans ultimately learned from the Goldwater movement was to hide their aims.It’s no accident that conservatives finally conquered the GOP, and won the presidency, under the sign of Ronald Reagan’s embrace of supplyside economics–i.e., the belief that you can promote massive tax cuts and deregulation without really demanding major retrenchment of New Deal/Great Society programs. David Stockman’s brilliant if long-forgotten memoir, The Triumph of Politics, confirmed the final unwillingness of conservatives to accept the fiscal logic of their philosophy. And this basic dishonesty remains a heavy legacy for Republican conservatives today–a characteristic, of course, that would horrify Barry Goldwater.So: what do Democrats have to learn from the early conservative movement? How to lose elections, lose influence, and ultimately win by losing your soul?It’s a good question, the night before a big snowstorm is expected to hit Washington, a place Barry Goldwater wished God or man would smite with every available plague.

This is getting to be really interesting. Armando of DailyKos has done a second post responding to my latest optimistic epistle on the future of Southern Democrats, and poses a few more questions and challenges that I’m happy to try to answer. Maybe I should apply for a Sympathy for the Devil diary on the Kos site, as a combined party unity/missionary effort.The main question Armando poses is why, exactly, Dems cratered between ’96 and ’04 among Southern self-identified moderates. He answers his own question by suggesting that 9/11 made all the difference, elevating the national security issue.Certainly that answer has something to do with it. Maybe it’s all those military bases; maybe it’s the disproportionate number of black, white and brown southerners who sign up to fight for their country; maybe it’s even that fightin’ frontier Jacksonian Scotch-Irish heritage that Walter Russell Mead writes about–but there’s no question national security matters more in the South than in, say, Iowa.But the problem with attributing the Dem decline between ’96 and ’04 to national security is the intervening election: ’00, when the Democratic presidential vote among white southerners collapsed, even though the candidate was, technically, a Southern White Guy (and, technically, a Baptist to boot) named Al Gore.In another section of his post, Armando suggests that Clinton’s personal qualities as a candidate, not his message or his positioning on issues, explains his relative success in the South. As I have argued at some length elsewhere, I don’t think you can separate the message and the messenger so cleanly, especially in the South, where Clinton’s communications gifts were considered natural, not supernatural.Personalities aside, the biggest difference between Clinton ’96 and Gore ’00 had to do with how each candidate dealt with two sets of issues: culture, and role-of-government–both big “trust” issues in the South. Clinton was thoroughly progressive, but went well out of his way to make it clear that he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” that he supported a modest gay rights agenda because everyone who “worked hard and played by the rules” should be treated the same; and that he fought to maintain and even expand the social safety net on condition that it truly represented a “hand up, not a handout.” Everyone in Washington laughed at Clinton’s “micro-initiatives” on supporting the family–V-chips, school uniforms, youth curfews, etc,–but they sent big messages in the culturally-sensitive South. And in general, Clinton’s whole ’96 message was that he was willing to reign in government’s excesses, while fighting to defend its essentials–the famous M2E2 (Medicare, Medicaid, Education and the Environment).Compare that message to Gore’s, and you go a long way towards understanding why the guy lost nearly half of Clinton’s southern white support. Gore was forever bellowing about partial-birth abortion legislation (supported by about three-fourths of southerners) representing a dire threat to the basic right to choose. While Clinton called for “mending, not ending” affirmative action, Gore pledged to defend every aspect of affirmative action with his life. Clinton talked about balancing gun ownership rights with responsibilities. Gore talked about national licensing of gun owners. Clinton talked about making government “smarter, not bigger.” Gore never mentioned his own role in the “reinventing government” initiative, and boasted an enormous policy agenda that added up to a message that he wanted to expand government as an end in itself.Moving forward four years, Kerry tried to avoid Gore’s mistakes on specific cultural and role-of-government issues, but never talked about these themes more than occasionally, and never came across with any kind of authenticity in his efforts to project himself as a man of faith, a hunter, a government-reformer, or a family guy. While Gore got killed by his positioning and the lack of a compelling message, Kerry got killed by the lack of a compelling message and by those personal characteristics–distorted and exaggerated by GOP propaganda–that made him seem alien to southern voters. And without any question, the polarization of the entire election pushed southern moderates, like moderates elsewhere, to pick sides instinctively rather than think it all through.(At the risk of gnawing this question to death, I might add that Clinton in ’96 was advancing an increasingly successful national policy agenda; Gore in ’00 perversely ran a campaign that avoided references to that success; and Kerry, of course, had to campaign as a critic, not as an achiever).The downward trajectory of the southern Dem vote between ’96 and ’04 also reflected demographic trends which I discussed in my earlier answer to Armando–trends that may not help Republicans that much in the immediate future, as the aging pains of new suburbs and bad GOP governance create a natural backlash that Democrats can exploit if they are smart enough.Armando seizes on my commentary about southern suburban moderates as a Dem target to suggest that maybe the belief that “values voters” are the key to the South is wrong.Well, that depends on your definition of “values voters.” If it means people who want to criminalize abortions, demonize gays and lesbians, or institutionalize evangelical Christianity, then no, suburban southerners don’t generally fit that category, and I’d personally write them off as targets even if that were the case, on both practical and moral grounds.My own (and generally, the DLC’s) definition of “values voters” is quite different. They are people who: (a) don’t must trust politicians, and want to know they care about something larger than themselves, their party, and the interest groups that support them; (b) don’t much trust government, and instinctively gravitate towards candidates who seem to care about the role that civic and religious institutions can play in public life; (c) don’t much trust elites, whom they suspect do not and cannot commit themselves to any particular set of moral absolutes; (d) don’t much like the general direction of contemporary culture (even if they are attracted to it as consumers), and want to know public officials treat that concern with respect and a limited agenda to do something about it; (e) are exquisitely sensitive about respect for particular values like patriotism, parenting and work; and (f) have a communitarian bent when it comes to cultural issues, and dislike those who view them strictly through the prism of the irresistable march towards absolute and universal individual rights without regard to social implications.By that definition, I think southern suburban moderates, and especially women in that demographic, are definitely “values voters.” In answer to Armando’s particular question about how suburban southerners would react to that wingnut in Kansas who wants to explore the sexual histories of women seeking abortions, I think the simple answer is that they would say: “Mind your own business, boy! Aren’t there some criminals out there you ought to be chasing?”Somebody at Vanderbilt once wrote a book entitled “The South’s Compulsive Need to Explain.” In that spirit, I hope the debate over the region and its political future continues. Clearly, Earle and Merle Black need some real competition.

Over a month ago I did a long, complicated post on prospects for some sort of Democratic comeback in the South, and probably lost a lot of readers halfway through with a “three-wave” theory and a tangent on the need for two-way biracial coalitions (an ensuing exchange with Armando of DailyKos got even further down into the weeds).So thanks to Ruy Teixeira of Donkey Rising for doing a post yesterday that zeroed in on the biggest sign for Southern Democratic hope on the toughest landscape, the presidential level: a set of statistics I cited but buried in too much prose.

In 1996, Clinton split the southern vote, 46-46, with Bob Dole. One of the keys to his strong performance was this: he actually carried southern white moderates by 46-44.In 2004, however, Kerry got beaten by 15 points in the south (57-42). So where have all the southern white moderates gone?In a sense, nowhere. The ideological profile of the southern electorate has barely changed since 1996: it was 17 percent liberal/44 percent moderate/39 conserative then; it is 17 percent liberal/43 percent moderate/40 percent conservative now. And among whites, the ideological profile was 15 percent liberal/43 percent moderate/43 percent conservative in 1996; it is 14 percent liberal/41 percent moderate/45 percent conservative now.Not much change. But what has changed is a big swing from Clinton’s 46-44 support among southern white moderates in ’96 to Kerry’s 58-41 deficit among the same voting group, whose size and electoral weight remains as potent as ever, in 2004.There’s your target. Move southern white moderates back toward parity and the Democrats are back in the (southern) ballgame.

The odds of making serious gains among Southern white moderates–and also of cutting modestly into the massive GOP margins among conservatives–are even better in non-presidential-year state races, like those coming up in 2006. Already, two strong potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates in the Deep South are focused on winning by swaying suburban moderate voters. Alabama Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley could benefit from a cultural-issues split between backers of incumbent Governor Bob Riley and his likely primary opponent, Ten-Commandments-toting former Judge Roy Moore. And Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox cites her ability to win key Atlanta suburban counties in 2002 as a major credential in her bid to topple incumbent Gov. Sonny Perdue.Just goes to show: sometimes the regional stereotypes can be misleading. Given all the talk in national Dem circles about the need to appeal to NASCAR-obsessed, pickup-truck driving rural Bubbas, it would be especially rich to see two women take over state houses by winning suburban moderates.

The word a couple of weeks ago was that DC GOPers were less than thrilled at CA Gov. Arnold Schwarzennegar’s redistricting reform ballot initiative, on grounds that the current system nationally is helping keep Republicans in charge, and they’d just as soon leave things as they are.Well, the odds of letting sleeping dogs lie on this subject just went way down, as Republican legislators in my poor home state of Georgia started a re-redistricting of Congressional Districts aimed at zapping a couple of Democratic incumbents. Their model, of course, is the Great Texas Power Grab of 2003, the re-redistricting engineered by Tom DeLay which ultimately produced a net gain of five House seats for the GOP, reversing what would have otherwise been a loss of seats in 2004 (Republicans in Colorado tried the same stunt, but were overruled by the courts citing a state constitutional provision limiting redistricting to once a decade). But in a way, the Georgia gambit is worse. In Texas, the fig-leaf justifications for the Power Grab were that (a) the Dem majority in the House delegation did not reflect recent partisan results in statewide elections, and (b) the map they were throwing out was drawn by judges, not legislators. In Georgia, (a) the current 7-6 GOP advantage in House districts is a pretty fair reflection of recent election results, and (b) the map they are throwing out was duly drawn by the legislature, signed by the Governor, pre-cleared by the Bush Justice Department, and upheld by the courts. In other words, the Georgia Republicans are undertaking this outrage, well, because they can. The new GOPer map is apparently aimed at snuffing two white Democratic House members, Jim Marshall, who represents a central-west central GA district, and John Barrow, who just beat a Republican incumbent to represent the Athens-Augusta-Savannah district. They aren’t going after the state’s four African-American House Members (John Lewis, Cynthia McKinney, David Scott, and Sanford Bishop) because that would raise an unmistakable Voting Right Act issue. But in any event, the GA Power Grab may wind up biting the national GOP in the butt. News of the latest Power Grab led (according to the subscription-only Roll Call newspaper) House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to put in a few phone calls to Democrats in the three states where their party has taken over total control of the executive and legislative branches since the regular redistricting cycle prior to 2002: Illinois, New Mexico, and Louisiana. Illinois is a potentially ripe target for a retaliatory re-redistricting, since GOPers hold nine seats, and because the new chairman of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel, is from that state. Moreover, one of the Illinois Republicans who could find himself in sudden trouble is a guy named Dennis Hastert. Personally, I hate all this re-redistricting crap, and the whole system of partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymandering that has reduced the People’s House of Congress to a vast rotten borough where politicians choose voters rather than the other way around. But if Republicans continue to game the system, they can’t complain if Democrats retaliate where they can, and maybe the whole spectacle can build support for a truly national drive for comprehensive redistricting reform. Maybe those Georgia Republican jokers will smell the coffee and call off the dogs before their own party’s House speaker finds himself hunted as well.

The blogosphere is abuzz today with commentary on the Swift Boat Veterans-style smear campaign underway against AARP for its temerity in opposing Bush’s SocSec privatization plan (Jeez, what did you expect, GOPers? Anything else would be like Jerry Falwell suddenly embracing an “alternative lifestyle.”).I followed Josh Marshall’s link to the truly bizarre and disgusting ad placed by the perpetrators of this smear, USANext, on The American Spectator site, and then took a quick gander at Smear Central itself. It’s not surprising that USANext is setting itself up as a Wingnut alternative to AARP, but still, I was a bit startled to see this pitch from none other than Art Linkletter:

Do you want more taxes taken out of your earnings? Do you want more unelected bureaucrats taking over more details of your life and your family’s life? Do you want federal regulators making your health choices, instead of you, your family, and your doctor? Do you want government regulators to control the investment and retirement decisions of your family, instead of you?If you answered “Yes,” then AARP is your group. They continuously work to create high taxes, big, invasive, bloated government, herds of regulators, and dependency of citizens on unelected bureaucrats.But if you answered “No,” USA Next is for you! Do you want lower taxes, more control over your life, health, and finances, with less government, and more constitutional restraints on judges and unelected bureaucrats? Then USA Next works and fights for you!

Now personally, I hope that if I make it to Linkletter’s age (92) I’ll be more focused on Getting Right with God than on Getting to the Right of Jimmy Dean Sausage. And I have a hard time believing he’s really sitting around all day worrying about the growing threat posed by “unelected bureaucrats.”But in any event, it’s clear that USANext’s goal is to drive down AARP’s membership dues, in one of those classic “defund the (sic!) Left” manuevers that Rove and Norquist are so fond of. The ploy also owes a lot to the old Communist fundraising tactic of creating a vast network of ideologically-approved civic and political organizations and forcing party members and fellow travelers to pony up for the cause.I do wonder, though, if these guys are really willing to go toe-to-toe with AARP in the full range of membership services by, for example, negotiating discounted rates with hotel chains. I just don’t know how many seniors out there are so devoted to the cause of screwing up their grandchildren’s retirement security that they are willing to pay full rates at Day’s Inn.

Speaking of Republicans and polls, I guess it’s time to comment on the early raft of opinion surveys about the identity of George W. Bush’s successor as GOP presidential nominee in 2008.As the latest Gallup Poll illustrates, every poll of Republican voters and leaners shows Rudy Guiliani and John McCain stomping the field (Gallup has Rudy at 33% and McCain at 30%, with Jeb Bush being the only other name that attracts double-digit support at 12%).Let me be among the first to say: it ain’t going to happen. The Republican Party is not going to nominate a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Rudy, and it’s not going to nominate a Scourge of the Conservative Movement like McCain, a man who has so consistently defied the Norquistian gospel that tax cuts trump every other national priority. If either of these gents runs for president and gains steam, the Right will unite behind someone else, either a safe ideological bet like Frist or Allen or Brownback (I don’t think Santorum is going to be in the Senate after 2006), or someone a bit less conventional like Hagel or Pawlenty or even Condi Rice, if she’s willing to take all sorts of oaths on cultural issues and taxes. Why? Because candidates like Guiliani and McCain would unravel the whole coalition of the cultural Right and the Mammon-worshippers on which today’s GOP has been so painstakingly constructed. And that coalition certainly has enough power to take down anyone it chooses in a Republican nominating contest.There’s another poll out there (reported via Jerome at Mydd) that’s a bit closer to the underlying reality of where the GOP will go in 2008: a “straw poll” taken at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee conference, which asked respondents who they thought would become the eventual nominee (NOT which candidate they personally favored). In this one Guiliani is basically tied with Rice in the high teens, and McCain’s down there tied with Frist and Allen at 11%.And that’s nearly four years out, before the Right has had the chance to mull over its options and road-test a new champion.Sure, GOPers are more than happy to let Guiliani and McCain get a lot of early attention, using them to give the party a more moderate image. But when the deal goes down, these guys will be discarded like an old Lincoln Day speech, and we’ll find out for real where the Right wants to take its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Republican Party.

Now here’s another depressing little item for your Presidents’ Day reading. As Steve Clemons reported last week, the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College of Maryland did a poll asking Americans how they’d vote in a hypothetical matchup of George Washington, and George W. Bush. While the Father of Our Country managed to crush W. by 20 points among all respondents, Bush won a 62-28 landslide among self-identified Republicans.Lord have mercy. I can understand how today’s Republicans have a healthy appreciation for Bush’s (or more accurately, Karl Rove’s) political skills. And I can even understand how a lot of people who aren’t that crazy about Bush decided to vote for him last year because they didn’t want a change of leadership or didn’t like (or didn’t understand) John Kerry. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, how could anybody prefer Bush to George Washington? To be sure, the poll indicated that many Americans don’t know much about George Washington beyond the cherry tree and wooden teeth myths, and it’s abundantly clear that many Americans don’t know much about Bush’s actual record. But still, it’s a sign that the Busholatry of today’s Republicans has gotten really out of hand. Depending on what happens during Bush’s second term, he is almost certain to go down in history as a president comparable to William McKinley at best (the symbol and vehicle for a political realignment he did little or nothing to cause) or Warren G. Harding at worst (the amiable front-man for a feeding frenzy of corruption and national irresponsibility). He clearly doesn’t belong in any comparison with George Washington, and millions of Republicans must be drunk on their own koolaid to think otherwise.

This morning brings the sad news that Hunter S. Thompson, the sage of Gonzo Journalism, has died at 67, of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.I never had the chance to meet Thompson, and haven’t paid much attention to his writings since the early 1980s, but at his peak, he was without peer as a improvisational writer on subjects ranging from politics to drugs to pro football, to–well, to nearly every subject touching on his tortured vision of the American Dream. Any blogger who hasn’t read Thompson is arguably missing the originator of the medium’s distinctive style, long before the internet. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, his brilliant account of the 1972 presidential campaign, reads a lot more like a long series of blog posts than any kind of print journalism report. And all his earlier books, from Hell’s Angels through The Curse of Lono, are worth reading and re-reading.Thompson’s career also represents a cautionary tale about the cost of celebrity–a celebrity he seemed to endure rather than pursue. At one point Thompson was planning another Fear and Loathing book about the 1976 presidential campaign, but abandoned it, because, as he told an interviewer: “It’s hard to cover a campaign as an Outlaw Journalist when you’re getting more attention than the candidates…. I can thank friend Trudeau for that.” He was referring, of course, to the Uncle Duke character in Doonesbury, based not-so-loosely on Thompson, which destroyed any sort of casual privacy for its model once and for all. And that’s also probably why Thompson’s later writings seemed often to read like self-parody.But his genius is without question, and in the welter of drugs and gunplay and sexual assault charges that appear to have marked his declining years, I can only hope he never lost his touching, almost naive faith in the possibilities of America “as a monument to the human race’s best instincts”–a faith that fueled his rage at the “greedheads” who betrayed those possibilities.So: here’s to Doctor Gonzo’s memory, and I guess the only proper way of commemorating his passing is to hunker down somewhere, light up a King Marlboro, shrewdly rip the pop tops off a six-pack of beer, and read his remarkable prose.

George W. Bush’s upcoming summit with his soul-buddy Vladimir Putin is a serious test of just about every strategic claim of the Bush administration.During the late campaign, both Bush and his running-mate Dick Cheney suddenly showed interest in the “loose nukes” issue, suggesting that terrorist access to nuclear materials was the biggest single threat to our national security. Yet there is no real evidence that Bush has ever made this a major issue in his discussions with Putin, despite the former Soviet Union’s unequalled status as the leaky valve in the world’s system of preventing sale of nuclear materials to anybody with the cash to buy them.Similarly, Russia’s headlong plunge towards quasi-fascism is a rather conspicuous challenge to Bush’s claim that America is spreading freedom and democracy into every corner of the globe. Will Bush make either of these issues–one of immediate, urgent importance to our national security, the other of long-term importance–a really big, visible deal in his discussions with Putin? Or will he settle for the usual symbolic gestures that signify no real commitments from Moscow? We’ll soon see if the Cowboy President who’s allegedly afraid of no one is willing to stand up to this challenge, or will again show he’s a virtual gunslinger who’s afraid to take risks that don’t excite the viewers of Fox News.

The New Republic’s latest issue includes a provocative package of essays on the future of liberalism as part of a 90-year anniversary of that magazine’s founding–an issue that notes the term was basically invented in its American context by TNR itself.It’s all worth reading. E.J. Dionne argues that liberals have erred in conceding religious language and religious constituencies to the GOP, part of the reason the robber barons of the Bush-Rove-DeLay ascendancy have gotten away with casting themselves as moral traditionalists. Martin Peretz offers a dyspeptic and occasionally annoying but fundamentally accurate take on the intellectual emptiness of today’s American Left (bloggers take note: definining yourself by savage partisanship doesn’t really mean “standing up for your principles” unless you articulate them). The always-interesting John Judis suggests that the shifting dynamics of the U.S. and global economies have placed liberals on a permanent defensive when it comes to economic policy.But for my money, the most instructive piece in the package is Jonathan Chait’s analysis of the asymmetrical war being waged by conservatives who have an ideological template for every policy they pursue, regardless of the context, the evidence, or the results; and liberals who are focused on real-life results as the end and are flexible as to the means for getting those results.Chait’s discourse strongly confirms the New Democrat argument that American Progressivism has always involved fixed, result-oriented ends and flexible, experimental means. By that definition, all the great icons of American Liberalism, from Wilson to FDR to JFK, LBJ, and MLK, anticipated less orthodox figures like Carter and Clinton in challenging the idea that every “liberal” program or policy had to be defended as a matter of principle. But Chait also challenges liberals of every variety to understand that their principled willingness to act as members of the “reality-based community” creates a tactical disadvantage in competing with conservatives whose policies are based on ideological certainties that are immune to actual experience or results.And that, I submit, is an important question in today’s debate within the Democratic Party about how to deal with the purely ideological politics of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Today there’s a strong sentiment, especially in the blogosphere, that we must closely emulate the conservative movement, and become as cynical, as fact-free, and as rigid as the opposition if we want to beat them. For a variety of reasons, including the superior appeal in the “reality-free community” of policies that offer free lunches domestically and a search-and-destroy missions internationally, I think that’s a losing proposition, and an unprincipled position, for Democrats. We need to raise our game and appeal to our best instincts, and the best instincts of the American people.