Warrior for the center

So is it useful then for Al Gore to call on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA director George Tenet and other administration officials to resign? Or is that what you mean by "standing up"?

I was trying to figure that out myself. Another important theme of the book is a frustration with Democrats, with liberals and progressives, because they seem to have lost their nerve. And to a considerable degree, I think that having other Democrats and liberals out there taking strong positions is probably more helpful [to John Kerry] than harmful. The Republicans have been very good at this division of labor. President Bush has not said the harshest things but left that to other people. I think Gore is playing the role of a kind of outrider. He'll ignite the conservative talk circuit, but I'm not sure that's very relevant, because those people won't vote against Bush anyway. A bunch of people might say [of Gore], 'Isn't that a little extreme?' But people move the debate by saying things outside the mainstream. Conservatives have been much more skillful about that over the last 30 years.

Your analysis has always been pretty measured. But this new book seems much punchier than is typical for you, more angry about the state of political discourse and frustrated with where attack-style politics has taken the country. For example, you quote Rich Lowry writing in the National Review that Clinton "forged a kind of amoral majority, consisting of Hollywood and ... pro-abortion feminists, urban secularists and a swath of straying husband and wives," and then you observe: "Now there's an astonishing take on a country that elected Clinton twice." So, how angry are you?

I am basically a liberal in my politics but a moderate by disposition. I have a lot of conservative friends I like and learn from. I don't think conservatives are evil people. So for me to feel this level of anger and alienation is surprising. I found that's true for an awful lot of people -- for people who didn't feel this when, say, the first President Bush was in power. So even though, yes, I'm a liberal, I don't think I'm that unusual in the country. Some of the things that have disturbed me have disturbed people who are not ideological liberals. I talk in the book about how after 9/11 my son and I stopped at a filling station owned by immigrants from India and they gave my son an American flag that he put on our car. That was the mood we were in in that period. I sort of ceased and desisted in my own criticisms of President Bush, and I think there are a lot of people like me now who feel burned. The thing that really bothers me is how Bush used 9/11 as a battering ram against a segment of the population that has really proved itself to be as patriotic as Republicans.

You write that by virtue of the GOP's sharp veer to the right, the Democratic Party now "carries the banner not only of the left but also of the center." Yet you also express doubt about Democrats' ability to speak to the center, to find its voice. And if the Democrats don't figure it out, you say they'll miss their "rendezvous with destiny." So how well do you think John Kerry is meeting this challenge?

Can I divide it into two parts? Into what Kerry has done right and what he has done wrong? The book argues for a patriotic progressivism. The way Kerry invoked his Vietnam service in the primaries spoke to a lot of people who are not part of the liberal base. And if you think, as I do, that there is a need to marry patriotism with progressive values, that's a good start. I also think his repeated references to John McCain are a good idea, because they appeal to those Republicans who are very uneasy with what's going on right now. What he's done wrong is perhaps looking too mechanical in moving left in the primaries to get the Dean vote and then obviously moving to the center in the general, when I think his main task is to get the election to be a referendum on Bush. The Republicans are really smart to use the flip-flop thing because it's a way of saying Kerry doesn't know who he is. They're trying to make him an unacceptable alternative to a not-very-popular president. But the flip-flop thing has its limits. People are cynical enough about politicians not to be surprised if they change positions.

Next Page: The connection between right-wing radicalism and the outrages at Abu Ghraib

• View blog reactions