Someone gets it

Much to the dismay of my friends in or associated with the Democratic Party, I've been saying for years now that they need candidates for President that are charismatic. Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale? All losers and none of them very inspiring. The Seattle Times today reprints a story from The Washington post about Montana's governor, Brian Schweitzer and it sounds like he understands what is needed to win that job:

"Be likable, be self-deprecating, don't be a know-it-all using a lot of big words," said Schweitzer, 50, who mixes plain speaking with blue jeans, a bolo tie and cowboy boots.

"In politics, it doesn't matter what the facts are," he said. "It matters what the perceptions are. It is the way you frame it."

There's a reason that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan attracted many of the same voters as well as why Bush attracted a fewer amount of those same people. Schweitzer seems to understand this.

Take heart, my Democratic friends (or not) because I'm going to say something else that I've repeated for years: the power, Constitutionally, in our government ultimately lies in the hands of the legislative branch where charisma plays an important, but truncated role in elections. Better still, said power really lies in the state's legislative branches. Conservatives, especially social conservatives, have understood this for years. Liberals would do well to follow that example instead of relying on big institutions like the courts to do their bidding. After all, the worries expressed by liberals now are that the courts might overturn Roe v. Wade. If the states had passed constitutional amendments or legislation securing a woman's right to privacy and abortion, then the battle for the next Supreme Court justice would not be so dire.