The New York Times reported today that Bill Clinton was reading Drew Westen's The Political Brain this past weekend. I feel so trendy.  I was reading it too. 

Clinton does come off awfully well in this book.  He and FDR are among the few emotionally-intelligent-and-communicating-it Presidents the Democratic party has produced.  Westen's point is that politics is a marketplace of emotions and narratives, not a marketplace of ideas.  He writes persuasively.  It does seem as if the Democrats have been steadily missing all possible boats for decades. 

At one point today I had Political Brain in my hand while a big screen was projecting images in front of me.  On that screen were two images:  President Bush speaking in a folksy way to people about healthcare, and the Oakland airport being evacuated because of a terrorism scare.  The sound was off, and I could see Bush's relaxed shoulders and his easy way of making eye contact.  People were just nodding along with him, smiling benevolently.  Meanwhile, things are not going too well for this country, and airports get evacuated.  He's a guy people would want to have a beer with, but he may be governing (if Cheney isn't doing absolutely everything) with that same gut sense - and it's not working. 

The Democrats don't seem to be able to find that kind of good-guy, emotionally-connected candidate.  Westen's point is that in order to govern (rationally!) the first step is to get elected.  You can't take that first step without emotion.

===Today, Chairman Martin feints towards "open access," in a shrewd political move.  If he can defuse network neutrality advocates by claiming to be giving them something they wanted, without really doing so, that will be quite a trick.  I'll explain the trick tomorrow, along with a report on the "iPhone hearing."