When I first read this Susan Estrich column (untitled, but it is dated Sept 1, 2004, as there are no definite links to the piece itself but is accessible via the dropdown menu at the bottom of the page) I could not help but laugh. I was laughing then, and I was laughing now.

Dear Miss Estrich: there is a reason why FOX News keeps taking note in their captions when you appear on their shows your having worked for Michael Dukakis. A failure then, and, as evidenced by this latest column of yours, you’d still be a failure today.

Here’s what Estrich and her ilk don’t understand. It isn’t the ugly mudslinging, nor is it their inability to separate political, meritorious attacks (such as, say, a Senatorial voting record or a series of presidential speeches that indicate an ideology) from personal attacks (such as implying that the Clintons assassinated someone, or that Mrs. Bush murdered someone with a car and got away with it), although it’s part of it, as Mike Hendrix notes:

Estrich and her media pals start slinging mud right from Bush’s inauguration, and it not only fails but backfires. So she concludes that there hasn’t been nearly enough mud slung, whines about perfectly legitimate attacks on Kerry’s record, and vows to plunge to new depths. We all know what’s going to follow her next failure: more whining, and a request for mining equipment.

— Mike Hendrix: New boss same as old boss; in other news, dog bites man

It’s that they have already played this hand over, and over, and over again. They are using the same gestures, the same tactics to bluff and bait and call on a bet in this game of poker, and I am under the suspicion that the general American populace is sick and tired of the scandalous, tabloid-like nature with which the Dems have attacked the President.

After three years of article after article in liberal newspapers, book after book after book of hundreds and hundreds of pages each with enough “evidence,” that, if were all credible, would have already forced a congressional investigation that will eclipse the Inquisition, and after treating the Bush presidency like a matter of celebrity scandal, the only impression left among us is that Democrats are not serious about good governance at a time of war, they want to entertain us!

All these scandalous rumours that the Estrich crowd are just so happy to trot out week after week hold no more credibility because they have been spaced out over the past three years. We have tuned out the background noise and are paying attention to the broadcast despite the static. And when nothing but static comes from the other side, the Bush camp appears with even greater clarity.

It is not enough that the Democrats start talking matters of merit. It is time for them to reexamine the nature of their rhetoric. There are legitimate questions over the administration’s merits, but their arguments are lost in the scandalmongering way with which they speak, and I have a hunch this is why the deluge of scandals has not worked in their favor: all the people they could possibly convince have already turned their backs from the Bush adminitration over the past three years, all by the use of the Dems’bug guns. Now all they have are spitballs compared to the flash bombs that they dropped every week early this year, at a time when a concentrated barrage of meritorious political scandals are most needed.

For three years, George W. Bush has endured the baddest that the Dems can do. Now, with less than sixty days, it’s the President’s turn, and they can’t take the heat.