I’ve been reading all about how former NJ Sen. Bill Bradley is now endorsing Barack Obama, and accusing the Clinton campaign of just about everything short of infant sacrifice.

I can’t stand Bill Bradley. He’s a pompous, sanctimonious ass (like his good buddy Phil Jackson) who did his best to destroy Al Gore in the 2000 primary. He’s the Democratic counterpart to “straight talker” John McCain.

See, back then, Bill Bradley was the “authentic” media darling who pretty much handed the Republican Party the list of talking points they used to attack Al Gore. The most prominent? He kept attacking Al Gore as a liar “who will do anything to win.” (Sound familiar? He’s pretty much a one-trick pony - that’s how he’s attacking Clinton, too.)

Here’s Jack Kemp quoting Bradley during the primary:

It’s starting to come out via Bill Bradley, who began to identify the exaggerations, the fabrications, the disingenuousness of Al Gore. And it’s coming out, and it’s going to be big-time.

Here’s Arianna Huffington in a 2/6/00 column:

Bradley has warned voters to watch for Mr. Gore’s “tricky” way with words, going as far as to compare him with Richard Nixon…In fact, not only this campaign but Mr. Gore’s entire career has been laden with untruths—all demonstrating a pattern of serial abuse of language, truth and reality.

He invented the Internet, discovered Love Canal and was the inspiration for “Love Story.” He lives on a farm, was “always pro-choice” and claimed that, “unlike Sen. Bradley,” he had co-sponsored the original McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill—even though Mr. Feingold was not elected to the Senate until Mr. Gore had already left to become vice president.

Now, of course, Arianna is attacking Hillary Clinton as a liar.

Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe:

The Bush campaign says Gore’s statements illustrate the vice president’s tendency to twist the facts for his own purposes. It is the same charge that former US senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey leveled against Gore last winter in the Democratic primary campaign.

Here’s another Boston Globe story from Jill Zuckman and Bob Hohler, 1/29/00:

Campaigning on the western side of the state yesterday, Bradley all but called Gore a liar, and invited comparisons between the vice president and former president Richard M. Nixon. Bradley also took to the airwaves with a scorching new ad attacking Gore’s claim, in Wednesday’s debate, to have always supported abortion rights.

When Bill Bradley boo-hoos, you should remember this is a seasoned politician who’s guilty of just about everything of which he accuses Hillary Clinton. (Carl Jung, genius.)

By the way, this is an interesting piece he wrote in March 2005 (go read the whole thing):

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don’t simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don’t start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan.

Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe.

In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don’t risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace “Republican lite” platforms - never realizing that in doing so they’re allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate.

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn’t translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade’s commitment, and it won’t come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

Thanks to Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler, who still fights the good fight and whose site pointed me toward the vast majority of the quoted work. There are few better ways to grasp the all-too-familiar media dynamics of this election than to read Bob’s archives.