State of the Union: I think Chris's identification of honesty as a key component separating Group 1 and Group 2 books (see lower down on the page) is pretty damn accurate. Witness the NPR coverage of Bush's SotU address last night. Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky, was on the phones with Dan Schorr and the gang for the post-speech analysis, and nothing McConnell said was at all substantive. All he did was re-word Bush's remarks (and, in some cases, just regurgitate) and reaffirm his allegiance to anything and everything the prez said. One wonders if Republicans would adopt the same attitude if Bush had done some mid-speech improvising about the dire importance of passing his proposed Mandatory Baby Rape Bill. "Well, the President showed some impressive leadership tonight on the baby rape issue, Daniel, and Americans responded. Americans know that the country was founded on the principles of mandatory baby rape and they know that tax-and-spend socialism isn't going to bring baby rape to the regular, God-fearing citizens of this great nation. It takes character and action. Tonight President Bush reminded us why he's so popular with normal, patriotic Americans, and why he was elected so decisively back in 2000." Honesty. It's supposed to be a virtue, but in the world of American politics, dare I say it, it often leads to death. It's probably the biggest reason why liberals got in the mess they're in now. Michael Moore, the popular and populist left-winger, has an entire chapter in the Group 1 book Stupid White Men about how Clinton was a terrible president. He constantly complains about the wimpishness of liberals -- and he considers himself a liberal. He's simply being honest. Clinton was not a great president. In many (most?) ways, he sucked. So did Reagan. Even from a right-wing perspective, Reagan did some things that sucked. But you'd never hear a blue-blooded Republican say a bad word about Reagan. He's a god. It's a basic tenet of rhetoric and propaganda. People are stupid. Don't appeal to their common sense, exploit their stupidity. If you act like you know what you're talking about, people will assume you do. Most liberals (technical Democrats like Lieberman excluded) spend too much time trying to analyze the issues and decide on a proper and clear-headed course of action (and, these days, in congress at least, try to agree as often as possible with conservatives). Republicans just read from the Official Conservative Script in a confident manner, and then wave the flag. Guess which one elicits a more powerful response.