THE TEDIOUSNESS OF TRAITOR-BAITING. Today's Richard Brookhiser column is as usual mostly gobbledegook, especially in the steam-losing last laps, but it does have a few instructive passages. One may even be instructive in a way intended by its author. It regards the good showing by Howard Dean in the recent MoveOn.org "primary," and after a few expectedly dismissive comments, asks:

Howard Dean may be a lightning bug, a bright but short-lived creature of the summer before election year. But suppose he is a portent? Barry Goldwater, the conservative conviction candidate of the early 1960’s, won his nomination in 1964, and went on to carry only six states. But he transformed the Republican Party for our lifetime. After Bill Clinton’s mini-issues and feints to the right, progressive Democrats wonder when they will get their own Goldwater. Howard Dean may be the great id of his party, rising in rebellion against its shifty Arkansas super-ego.

This may be Brookhiser's attempt at a new poison meme for Democrats: if Dean is Goldwater, he must lose as Goldwater lost -- and if Dean by some miracle takes the nomination, this only proves the point, and precertifies his failure.

But Dean-watching righties have heretofore been broadcasting a different idea -- that of Dean as McGovern. Bruce Bartlett practically starts his D-as-McG tract by stating that "Frankly, I don’t see any way that [Bush]can be beaten by any Democrat now in the field" and "I think most Democrats know this... [so] If Democrats are going down in flames anyway, the base figures that they might as well do so behind someone who speaks to their soul, rather than some pale imitation."

This idea similarly preordains defeat -- indeed, willful defeat. (Maybe these guys have been comparing Democrats to the Taliban for so long that they imagine them capable of suicide-bomb candidacies.)

But the difference in Brookhiser's Goldwater idea is that the noble Barry is generally thought to be the Godfather of the current radical-right Republican Party -- out of the ashes of 1964, goes that story, came Reagan, Falwell, and other such keepers of the flim-flam. Goldwater's losing battle, unlike McGovern's, presaged a successful war. So this is a new one: Dean as the future of the Party, rather than an annoying historic hiccup.

Could it be? Dean's Internet fundraising is impressive. But remember Jerry Brown? Back in the 1992 Time called him a "1-800 Pound Gorilla" because he kept yelling out his donation digits on TV and getting campaign bucks for his Presidential run that way. It was supposed to herald a new age in the way campaigns were financed.

Today Brown is cooling his national ambitions as the Mayor of Oakland, CA, McCain-Feingold is in the middle of possibly fatal judicial review, and both parties are even more beholden to special interests than they were eleven years ago. Whatever the Internet-changes-everything crowd may think, Dean's PayPals aren't likely to transfigure anything.

As to Dean himself, well, that's another story. I can't say I'm surprised by his popularity. What he's saying isn't so far out. Some loud voices have been making it seem so (no link needed -- just read my archives!), but I suspect their influence is dwindling.

In fact, let me go so far as to say that we may have reached a critical mass of bullshit -- a moment when so much nonsense has been ingested by the average American that, nonsense-tolerant as he may be, he grows bored enough with the current flavor to entertain alternatives. Iraq is in disarray and the economy is in the toilet -- most of the stories used by Administration supporters to misdirect us from these facts are wearing thin. And look how fast it happened! When the aforelinked Daniel Pipes screed, "Why the Left Loves Osama (And Saddam)," first ran in March, it was very much of a piece with all the other GOP traitor-baiting sideshows surrounding World War Whatever -- now it seems a quaint relic of a darker, dumber time.

Am I a touch Pollyannaish? Consider this other passage from Brookhiser as he considers Dean's anti-war cred:

Mr. Dean tells the Democratic left what it wants to hear -- fear, carping and doubt.... The truth is, we knew the truth about Saddam’s nature; the deadly flailings of his diehards is another facet of that truth, along with oppression, terror and war... Given Mr. Dean’s ignorance of these truths, what weight can we possibly assign to his belief that it’s "a good thing to have Saddam gone"? If we had let Howard Dean lead the search for the facts, Kofi Annan would still be doing shuttle diplomacy in Baghdad...

Does this not seem a little... familiar? A tad tired? A hint desperate?