PICK THE CHARACTERISTIC YOU'D LIKE MOST IN YOUR POLITICAL LEADERS: FEAR OR COURAGE

One of the premises of Glenn Hurowitz's brilliant new book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, is that voters are attracted to-- even crave-- strong and resolute leadership, even above and beyond issue agreement. "Voters," writes Hurowitz, "continue to look for candidates who will stand up and fight for their principles-- even if they happen to disagree with those principles."

He points to how this resolute image helped a progressive hero like Paul Wellstone, who was widely admired for voting his convictions-- sometimes less than popular convictions-- as well as arch-villain George Bush, who has successfully employed a 7 year multimillion dollar P.R. effort to portray himself as a strong leader even while he is a cowardly, vacillating and weak individual... pigheaded and stubborn but neither strong nor anchored in principle.

Throughout his book, Hurowitz points out how shallow, shifting, fearful Democrats have suffered at the polls by listening to the valueless consultants urging them to abandon progressive principles in a quest or the ever-shifting quicksands of an illusory "middle ground."

Less than half the voters even know where candidates stand on the most crucial issues of the day, and when politicians "seem to be shifting their agenda out of political expediency and not out of conviction, it hurts them when voters are considering whether or not Democrats are 'strong leaders' or 'have integrity, two measures that matter far more than a candidate's issue positions."

This is Hillary Clinton's fatal flaw. Shifting is the exact prescription the corporately-funded DLC is always urging Democrats to do to survive and it is why Democrats have fared so poorly in the last decade.

This week's Time includes a piece by Mark Halperin and Amy Sullivan, "How America Decides," that confirms much of Hurowitz's thesis but points out significant differences between the ways Democratic voters and Republican voters see politics.

As Hurowitz's research proves, both Democrats and Republicans are looking for strong leadership, although Republicans are far more concerned with "strong moral character" than are Democrats, while Democrats are far more concerned with good judgment and in finding politicians who care about people than Republican voters are.

Halperin and Sullivan claim that just over half of Republican voters consider issue agreement the #1 factor in backing a candidate, while they claim-- in direct contrast to Hurowitz's more rigorous and better analyzed research-- that 71% of Democrats are issue-oriented when it comes to deciding on a candidate. Hurowitz shows that voters actually use party identification more than actual detailed knowledge of issue stands.

The Time article claims economic issues are more important to Democrats than to Republicans (46% to 25%) and national security is more important to Republicans (47% to 23%). Democrats care far more about health care, the environment, the Iraq war, employment issues, and our nation's image and influence abroad. Republicans care much more than Democrats about same sex marriage, future terrorist attacks and illegal aliens. (It's very ugly being a Republican.)