Bush cannot be treated -- he must be surgically removed

While the Shadow Conventions, the anti-SUV campaign, and the anti-tax-haven campaign were actually extensions of what I had been doing for my whole life, my next campaign definitely broke new personal ground. I ran for governor.

Though I didn't support the recall effort, once it was set in motion -- once it was definitely going to happen -- I felt it was foolish to assume it would be defeated. And I was drawn by the unprecedented opportunity it offered to elect a truly progressive governor to the world's fifth-largest economy. And to give a voice to all the people of California, not just those who could afford to buy public policy.

I also wanted to connect the dots between California's plight and the reckless economic policies of the Bush administration. And, as I ended up saying again and again and again over the course of the campaign, there was nothing more laughable than hearing Bush Republicans prattling on self-righteously about the fiscal irresponsibility of Gray Davis while ignoring the orgy of fiscal irresponsibility that the White House and the Republican Congress are hosting.

But I learned on the campaign trail that laying out clearly articulated policies and a clear critique of your opponent is not enough. And it will definitely not be enough to beat Bush in 2004. The Democratic nominee will have to have a powerful narrative to counter the very simple but very compelling "tax cuts, more tax cuts, and further tax cuts" fairy tale being put forth by the Bush White House. What I have realized is that the narrative must be exceptionally bold -- transcending not just what passes for the current Democratic vision but even the vision of the politically successful Clinton years. It has to go back to the founding of our country, to the spiritual absolute the Founding Fathers grounded America in when they declared "all men are created equal" -- a premise Abraham Lincoln called "the father of all moral principle."

It's the same moral principle FDR gave expression to when he said that "the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." It's the same moral principle Bobby Kennedy echoed amid the social upheaval of the 1960s: "I believe that as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil."

Not only have we become unmoored from those principles, we've drifted tragically far from them. Which is why, as I learned on the campaign trail, stopping any more Republican takeovers has an urgency that supersedes the larger imperative of breaking the stranglehold of two party politics in order to challenge the broken status quo.

This difference between the urgent and the important is exactly what prompted me to drop out of the recall race when it became clear that I wouldn't win. If I had not, and Arnold Schwarzenegger had eked into the governor's office, I would not have been able to forgive myself. And even though my withdrawal ultimately proved futile, the sense of foreboding that motivated it was validated when, in his first budget, the new governor proposed cutting $4.6 billion from health care, education, and welfare programs. He had already repealed the car tax without having alternative funding for the essential local government services -- things like police and fire departments -- that the $4 billion from the car tax was earmarked for.

It's clear that the damage being done by the Republican fanatics -- whether in Washington or Sacramento -- is such that we cannot afford the kind of protest votes that are geared toward long-term reform. I didn't have a problem with Ralph Nader's running in 2000. But that was then and this is now. Now we have seen George Bush's true colors. We have seen what has happened in Iraq. We have seen what has happened to the goodwill we once enjoyed around the world. We have seen the results of his regressive economic policies. We have seen who benefits and who loses in the world according to George Bush. It's folly to pretend that it doesn't make a difference whether Bush or his Democratic opponent is in the White House. It's like trying to unring the last three years' carillon of alarms.

It's all well and good to dream about how wonderful it would be to remodel your home, but when your house is going up in flames, your first priority must be putting the fire out. Our collective priority for the near term must be to evict the Crawford squatter from the White House. Only then can we set about remodeling our democratic home. We simply can't do it in reverse.

In a very real way, the California recall race was a microcosm of everything that is going on in the country today, a showcase for the strengths and weaknesses of the two political parties. The Bush Republicans' greatest strength was the simplicity of their antitax, anti-regulation message, hand-delivered by a charismatic messenger. The Democrats' greatest failing was a partywide lack of insight, courage, and strategic acumen.

So this book is divided into four parts. The first is a chapter-and-verse diagnosis of the fanaticism that drives the Bush White House. It also offers a clear-eyed prescription: Bush cannot be treated, let alone cured. He has to be surgically removed. The second part is a close-up look at a remarkable breakthrough in Bush Republican cloning -- the rise of the charming antitax fanatic Arnold Schwarzenegger. The third part recounts and examines the Democratic Party leadership's congenital inability to stop shooting itself in the foot. It comes with a prescription: the Democrats need more than Bushwhacking and a better Medicare drug plan to regain the White House in November. Precisely what this "more" is will be found in the fourth part of the book -- my hard-earned-in-the-trenches political donation to the Democratic presidential nominee.

It's the secret weapon for beating Bush.

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