A slight correction: Zinn was never a "Harvard professor."

He taught at Spelman College in Atlanta during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Boston University, where he has been ever since.

Though this is really a side issue to what is an excellent post, I think one needs to be careful about simply accepting Shadia Drury's view of either Leo Strauss or his impact on the neoconservatives. Strauss is an important figure for many neoconservatives, including both Irving and Bill Kristol. But his ideas, and their impact on American conservatism, are a good deal more subtle than Drury suggests.

On his show today, Matthews, in a discussion of a potential independent presidential campaign by Michael Bloomberg, repeatedly asserted that Ross Perot took votes away from Bush in 1992 and implied that he handed the race to Clinton. Nobody disagreed.

Though this is an old GOP talking point, actual exit polling indicates that Perot's vote would have split about 50/50 between the two major party candidates in a two-person race.

As always, Matthews was just making stuff up. As always his guests, who are cut from very much the same cloth, let him.

At least in my view, Howard Dean's 2004 candidacy prompted such passion and excitement not because of any specific policy plans or even views on issues which he advocated (even including Iraq). Far more important was the fact that he looked, sounded and smelled like (and I think actually was) an insurgent candidate -- someone who emerged outside of our corroded Beltway system and seemed legitimately opposed to it, even hostile towards and disgusted by it.

Insurgent candidates do create excitement. But so do pseudo-insurgent candidates, like John McCain (in 2000) and even George W. Bush (in 2000 post-SC: "a reformer with results").

Although the Clinton crowd is obviously unwilling (or unable) to play the insurgency game, the system is more or less geared for pseudo-insurgent candidates to triumph. The media can go on and on about their maverick status, while the folks with the money quietly write checks to them.

Pseudo-insurgency is, in many ways, as big a problem as the anti-insurgent rhetoric of "substance."

(FWIW, I think there's a case to be made for Dean as pseudo-insurgent. I'm not sure that I agree with Glenn that he did more than look, sound, and smell like an insurgent...but that's an argument for another day.)

I'm reminded of Berthold Brecht's short poem, Die Lösung (The Solution), written after the failed East German uprising of 1953:

After the uprising of the 17th June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

Yellowdog: Glenn, you got it absolutely right that the republican base is determined to nominate a double-high authoritarian, regardless of his stands on specific issues like abortion or gays. Guiliani meets that standard perfectly.

And that opens up a huge opportunity for Democrats.

Unfortunately, as we've learned especially vividly over the last six years, "that opens up a huge opportunity for Democrats" is usually a recitative that precedes a dirge.

Another excellent post, Glenn! Keep up the good work!

Just one quibble: in an effort to nail ABC (who deserve it) you seem to let Washington Post "liberal" columnist Richard Cohen off the hook by blaming his shameless fluffing of the Bush administration on ABC's misinformation.

Cohen is entirely capable of deluding himself without any help from the ABCs of the world. As you know (and have written about at length) the Washington punditocracy has been as craven in their uncritical support for the Bush administration as have reporters like Ross. And despite his supposed liberalism, Cohen has been part of the problem. Indeed, his liberalism only makes his willingness to mouth administration talking points that much worse.

As Glenn's update suggests, another common meme in the mainstream media that polls belie is the publics' desire that both major parties be more "centrist," which the media usually uses to mean more willing to embrace the opinions of Washington pundits like David Broder. The polls Glenn cites very strongly suggest that this is neither the case on the left nor the right.

I really appreciate this one.

I left the Democratic Party in the mid-1990s. The straw that broke the camel's back was welfare "reform," but a lot of other things led up to it. (FWIW, I consider myself a Green, but since I can't register Green in my state, I'm formally an Independent.)

But the behavior of the party when considering the Military Commissions Act last year made me particularly proud not to be a Democrat. The party's behavior was reprehensible, but all too predictable.

One of the faults of the so-called left of the blogosphere is that it too often puts partisanship before principle. So I'm always very heartened when bloggers are willing to put principle first.

Keep up the good work, Glenn. You're one of the best!