Warrior for the center

At the same time, what's happening in Iraq has increased people's sense that nuance may not be such a terrible thing. But I think the attack is more about character. Kerry has got to be someone people are comfortable enough with that they'll use him to throw out President Bush. That's why I think the flip-flop attack should not be underrated.

You recap some of the harsh criticism from Republicans of Bill Clinton, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who once called the president a "jerk." You write: "It is astonishing that Republicans should now be shocked that Democrats might finally decide to use comparably tough words to criticize a Republican president." So what do you make of Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota retracting his comparison of far-right Republicans to the Taliban? He ended up abjectly apologizing.

Oh, I don't know. Probably comparing anybody to the Taliban is not a good idea. There is a sense of frustration with conservatives who ally their cause with the cause of God, and there are plenty of non-Republicans out there who are believers, and they are frustrated. But I don't like accusing anyone of being like the Taliban. Personally I think Tim Johnson is a good person and not an over-the-top guy.

You also argue there's a double standard among conservatives, who consider that "any attack on Bill Clinton was morally justified [but] any attack on George W. Bush was a sign of lunacy."

One of the problems with the public debate is that serious conservatism has been replaced by attack conservatism. But there is another style of conservatism that is not really conservative. It is -- what's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to use the word "radical" because it's a word I actually respect. It's more about public relations, making the convenient argument at the right time, and it's also about celebrity.

Far from being conservative, the right has been quite radical in manipulating American institutions in novel ways to achieve political goals, you argue. As examples you cite the impeachment of President Clinton, the Supreme Court's partisan 5-4 decision to stop the 2000 Florida recount, the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's breaking tradition to push through a mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts in Texas. Do you see a line from such "radicalism" to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal? The Bush administration has, after all, made clear its disdain for the Geneva Conventions and international law.

The founding document of our country refers to a decent respect for mankind. That's what we were founded on, and most of these international documents were written with enormous American input and stamped with our values. So to turn your back on them because it's convenient is not only a mistake, it's simply not in the country's interest. It's decidedly un-conservative to use institutions this way. The five judges who ruled in favor of Bush had to really, really stretch their principles to get to that result. It's not good for a conservative justice to do that. Reapportioning districts in the middle of a 10-year period is very un-conservative, because tradition says you do it once a decade and you live with it until the next time. There are a lot of traditional conservatives who understand that human nature is flawed and needs to be hemmed in by rules, and they have doubts about the direction we're going. I think conservatives have been pretty good at taking on liberal inconsistencies, and sometimes the conservatives have been right. But it's now a good time to take on conservative inconsistencies as well. One of the things I find fascinating is there are a number of people in the military who are not happy about how things are going. These are people who at heart are Republicans and conservative.

Speaking of conservative inconsistencies, what about House Speaker Dennis Hastert lecturing Sen. John McCain on the meaning of sacrifice for your country? I mean, come on. McCain spent five years as a North Vietnamese POW, with two years in solitary confinement.

The question which I've been asking myself [about Republican rhetoric] is, Has the bottom completely fallen out? I don't think the bottom has completely fallen out, but there is a danger for the Republicans that it is on the verge of falling out. When Hastert says something like that, it is the kind of over-the-topness that is now getting criticized and noticed. What has happened in the last six months is that things the media and the Democrats used to let slip by aren't slipping by anymore. There's not an automatic, "He's the president. It's unpatriotic to criticize him." That view is no longer there.

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