Table of Contents

Building a durable centrist majority largely by transcending ideology and splitting the difference when possible remains the essence of Clinton Politics. Bill Clinton saw the job of the president as being a national synthesizer. He aimed to select the best ideas from all parts of the ideological spectrum and reassemble them in ways that met the practical needs of an electorate interested in results instead of ideology. He embraced some traditionally conservative goals, such as balanced budgets and the elimination of a 1930s-era welfare system, but tried to preserve liberal principles in the implementation. He took some traditionally liberal goals, such as expanding access to higher education, but pursued them through conservative means, such as tax credits. He was convinced that many of the disputes of the modern political arena were artificial, deliberately manufactured, or at least exaggerated, by candidates, operatives, and interest groups inclined to exploit conflict, not facilitate consensus.

Bush Politics is a political strategy based on expanding executive power, drawing sharp ideological divides between the parties, defying rather than compromising with adversaries, marginalizing the Old Media, and exploiting the New Media. George Bush sees himself as a national clarifier. In the main, he and Karl Rove believe the disputes that animate American politics are deep and genuine. While preaching the virtues of civility, Bush is willing to split the country over what he considered to be basic points: Are taxes too high or too low? What is the proper balance of force versus persuasion in America's relations with the world? Are liberal interests disproportionately influential as measured against the views of the majority?

For Bush, dividing the electorate is an acceptable avenue to a consequential presidency, one that will make the country's policies and institutions more conservative than they have been for generations.

Shortly after the 2004 election, the advantages of Bush Politics seemed particularly evident. Bush had indeed divided the country, but on terms favorable to him and his values. He had spent much of his first term signing laws and executive orders that moved the country in a more conservative direction, routinely backed by the fervent support of a bare majority of Congress, rather than by overwhelming public enthusiasm.

Yet in the days before the 2006 election, the defects of Bush Politics were acutely evident. Bush Politics works only when it is harnessed to clear policy successes. Bush's impassioned base gave him 51 percent of the country in 2004, but the campaign strategy of confrontation guaranteed that a hefty chunk of the losing 49 percent was equally impassioned in their scorn. This exposed Bush and Rove to constant risk that the percentages would reverse themselves, as they did in the 2006 election. Republicans turned on Bush in ways that would have been unthinkable a few months earlier. The backlash was evident on right-wing blogs, on talk radio, and on Capitol Hill. Liberals watched with glee.

Many of the White House's setbacks seemed to flow from an attempt to apply Bush Politics within the executive branch. While it can be a brutally effective strategy for winning elections, Bush Politics entails risks for the long haul. Clinton Politics, with its emphasis on high approval ratings and its constant shifting and improvisation, may be less emotionally satisfying for partisan loyalists and less conducive to producing major ideological change, but it is a reliable means of maintaining a politically resilient presidency.

Bush Politics is incompatible with Bush's professed desire to change the tone in Washington. A president committed to making national politics more civil must expect to occasionally pay a price, to take a hit from the opposition, and to refrain from delivering a blow, even if a good opportunity appears.

Even as Bush's support faltered in 2006, Bush Politics remained an attractive political strategy for many people, Democrats as well as Republicans. Impatient with the cautious, defensive-minded maneuvering that they correctly associate with Clinton Politics, many left-wing partisans are eager for their own side to embrace the confrontational, unapologetic brand of politics associated with Bush and Rove. What some want is a liberal version of Bush Politics. Let's finally get tough and do to them what they did to us, many Democrats bellow. They are persuaded that fulfilling a liberal agenda, including ending the war in Iraq, paying for universal health care coverage, and raising taxes on the wealthy and corporate interests, requires such a posture. Even Clinton's achievements do not impress many Democrats who have been radicalized by the Bush years.

It seems possible that both parties in 2008 will have nomination contests in which Bush Politics faces off against Clinton Politics. Every candidate will make a fundamental choice: Do they wish to base their candidacy on unifying themes and crossover appeal between the parties? Or do they wish to accept the divisions in the electorate as essentially unbridgeable and strive to win an ideological and partisan argument?

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More than any other election before it, the 2008 showdown will be fought in the shadow of a new and fierce phenomenon in American politics: the Freak Show.

The Freak Show is about the fundamental changes in media and politics that have converged to tear down old restraints in campaigns and public debate. The power of the Freak Show has developed through the destabilization of political journalism practiced by the so-called Old Media, which includes the broadcast television networks, major newspapers, and national weekly news magazines. The relative decline of the Old Media has been caused partly by the rise of the New Media, which includes the Internet, talk radio, and cable television. These changes have contributed to polarization. While polarization is not a new phenomenon in American history, the Freak Show is new. Its incentives for divisiveness are embedded deeply in political and media culture. These incentives -- for publicity, for influence, for money, for votes -- favor more extreme and uncompromising positions, provoking the ruthless tearing down of adversaries. Opponents are portrayed not simply as wrong but as morally flawed.

The engines of the Freak Show operate at the center of national politics, not just at the margins. The anger and negativity of the Freak Show have supplanted the genuine and productive arguments that should be at the center of national politics.

The supreme challenge for any presidential candidate is keeping control of his or her public image in the face of the Freak Show's destructive power. Successful candidates have a strategy for insulating themselves from the Freak Show (and, when possible, for exploiting it against their opponents). For both idealistic and realistic reasons, the best way to accomplish this is to have something important to say. The Freak Show is the enemy of ideas. But ideas are also the enemy of the Freak Show.

Politicians are seeking to navigate a wild new age in our democracy, a challenge in which every American -- including the next president of the United States -- has a stake. The Freak Show was a decisive factor in Bush's 2004 win. Bush was running for reelection at a time when polls showed many voters were not satisfied with the general direction of the country and his job approval ratings were below the levels at which a president is considered safe to retain the office. Bush's strategists knew their candidate would be in danger if the election was viewed primarily as a referendum on the previous four years. The race had to be seen as a choice between Bush and Sen. John Kerry. The principal goals of the Bush campaign, therefore, were to persuade undecided voters that Kerry was an unacceptable alternative and to energize core supporters who were devoted to the president and disliked the senator. The Bush team pursued those targets by harnessing the poisonous strength of the new political-media environment.

This strategy almost certainly would not have worked in a past era, when the major newspapers and television networks of the Old Media controlled the climate. A primary characteristic of Freak Show politics is the deterioration of Old Media filters. In the past, the Old Media tended to sift and suppress the angriest and most sensational elements of politics, using its editorial sensibility to shape voters' judgments. But in the modern era, the power of the Old Media has weakened, challenged by the ideologically driven news organizations, websites, and pundit-provocateurs that make up the New Media.

The simultaneous stumble of the Old Media and the rise of the New have had a disproportionate impact on the two warring sides in American politics. While there are plenty of conservatives who have been singed (or even burned at the stake) by the Freak Show, on the whole, these changes have been beneficial for conservatives and bad for liberals, since the New Media overwhelmingly favors conservatives. There is no liberal equivalent of the Fox News Channel, or Rush Limbaugh, or the Drudge Report, all of which have significant audiences and a demonstrated ability to promote controversies and story lines that affect the Old Media. The Left, enraged by Bush's presidency and humiliated by the Right's successes in message control, lately has moved to promote its own New Media agents, especially bloggers. In the same manner as their conservative counterparts, these liberal voices seethe with contempt for what they regard as the hypocrisy and incompetence of the Old Media.

The Left, likewise, has embraced its own brand of Freak Show politics, with a similar emphasis on accusation and ideological fervor. There is no reason to expect, however, that by 2008, the Left will have altered the fundamental balance of the right-leaning Freak Show.

The New Media's bias toward Republicans is unfair. But the New Media's growth was fueled by a widespread perception on the right that the Old Media's favoritism toward Democrats, while less overt, was itself unfair. An Old Media tilt to the left existed for decades before the Freak Show, and still exists, albeit with diminished potency. The Right took its grievances and embraced a brand of New Media journalism that was less responsible and more blatant in its personal and ideological prejudices. Alarmed by this challenge to its primacy, the Old Media too often responded not with a recommitment to high standards, but by allowing the New Media to commandeer the Old Media agenda. This downward cycle has defined coverage of recent presidential campaigns, and it will be even more pervasive in the next one.

Twisted incentives. In the Age of the Freak Show, centrist values such as rhetorical restraint, ideological moderation, and compromise with opponents are increasingly impoverished. Extremist values such as rhetorical invective, ideological purity, and partisan loyalty are richly rewarded. To be sure, it is rational to seek power, fame, and wealth. But the cumulative effect of these incentives and the actions they inspire is a political system constantly staggering toward the irrational.

The Right's New Media infrastructure, unlike the Left's, is large enough that conservative partisans can receive all their news from it -- effectively de-legitimizing and marginalizing any Old Media story line to which they object. Old Media journalists can challenge Republican politicians, but these politicians can choose to ignore them, confident that their supporters will pay no heed to the criticism, and that they have effective venues to make their case. And there has been no more effective venue for promoting the Freak Show agenda in presidential politics than the website run out of the Miami apartment of Matt Drudge, the impresario of the attacked-based personality-obsessed politics that is the Freak Show's signature.

According to Nielsen Net Ratings, the Drudge Report website receives between 180 and 200 million page views a month, along with around 3 million unique visitors. Drudge's readers count on him to be a clearinghouse for the latest bizarre, or inflammatory, or salacious stories moving in the world of news or popular culture, and especially in politics. Among those who regularly click on the page is Karl Rove. Members of the Gang of 500 -- which, according to the New Yorker, includes "the campaign consultants, strategists, pollsters, pundits, and journalists who make up the modern- day political establishment" -- all read the Drudge Report. If the greatest challenge of any person seeking the presidency is keeping control of his or her public image, and the great obstacle to this control is the Freak Show, then Matt Drudge is the gatekeeper. In this sense, he is the Walter Cronkite of his era.

In any case, the die is cast: The next presidential election will take place in a Freak Show environment more virulent than anything Bill Clinton and George W. Bush ever faced. With 16 straight years of polarizing presidents, new bloggers and websites popping up daily, a poisoned tone in Washington, unshackled interest groups, campaign finance laws that help channel money toward shadowy sources, and the further decline of the Old Media's commitment to serious news coverage -- with all that, plus a wide-open race with no incumbent president or vice president running -- the 2008 election is sure to be one in which nearly every hand reaching for the brass ring will be wearing brass knuckles.