Confidence

Robin Toner: "[Congressional Democrats'] aggressiveness and unity on a major foreign-policy challenge to the president is a striking change for a party that has, on many occasions over many years, seemed to be on the defensive on national security issues."

To me, this is huge. National security is like trying to get a date: confidence matters. A political party that often looked scared of talking about national security ("but what if Rove says we're weak?!?!") looked like people who certainly weren't going to handle any potentially scary problems. It's a lot easier to seem like a tough, confident political movement in possession of some good ideas when your people are out there saying things they seem to actually believe, instead of offering up a lot of hemming and hawing.

Comments

"National security is like trying to get a date"

There's the subtitle for your book.

Posted by otto | March 29, 2007 9:04 AM

Well, I'd say national security politics is like trying to get a date. The Bush Administration was for years great at national security politics, but its confidence ill served our national security.

This is terrible nitpicking, since it's clear what you meant, but the GOP has done so much to conflate national security with national security politics that I wanted to fight back.

Posted by Matt Weiner | March 29, 2007 9:18 AM

Is the book already finished - or is there time for a quick switcheroo? You appear to be writing a national security book making use of dating analogies, but I'd say the real money is in a book about dating using national security analogies.

Posted by otto | March 29, 2007 9:23 AM