The Need for a Controlling Myth

Democrats' need for a new political myth was never more in evidence than in the wake of the Ned Lamont win over Joe Lieberman this week.

Republicans were ready. They went straight back to the Nixon playbook, to the myth which has worked so well for nearly 40 years, the Nixon Myth of Conflict, of enemies everywhere. They quickly put out a flyer with Democrats' faces (they even painted a Hitler mustache on DNC chair Howard Dean -- how cute) and called the party soft on defense, not to be trusted. The lead picture was that of Connecticut winner Ned Lamont.

Where the Nixon myth has yet to be challenged, this worked like a charm. Even Georgia Democrats accepted the juvenile name-calling as somehow justified. Mark Schmitt found such Vietnam analogies filling the national dialogue. This despite the fact that Democrats actually increased their generic lead after the result became clear.

What this proves is that, nationally (if not in Georgia) the Nixon Myth no longer works, just as the FDR myth no longer worked by the mid-1960s. The reason is that, for most voters, it's history, and for nearly all voters, it's irrelevant to the problems of the day.

Yet the myth still works, with the media, because it is unchallenged. There is no new Democratic myth to put against it. When you read Stirling Newberry, going on at interminable length trying to explain what his candidate (John Edwards) is all about, you can understand what I'm talking about.

Myths simplify analysis, for pundits and voters alike. They emerge out of a shared sense of history, a shared understanding concerning the meaning of the past, and what that should tell us about our shared future. They build values which leads to power.

Nothing illustrates this better than today's Internet. Through this medium we have the ability to communicate with, learn from, and organize with people around the country and around the world. We have access to a greater intellectual commons than has ever existed before. This medium is built on simple, common values -- openness, transparency, connectivity -- which are understood by everyone.

Every new political myth has its genesis in the recent past. For the Nixon myth that past was McCarthyism. For the FDR myth it was Wilsonism. For the Progressive Myth it was the Mugwumps. And for the Union myth of Lincoln, it was Abolitionism.

The Internet, in the form of the World Wide Web, is now about as old as those movements were when they came to the front of the national debate. It is a unifying force, at a time when we need unity very badly. It is, by its nature, a peaceful medium, in contrast to the war the old myth has brought us. And this medium is focused on solutions, solutions reached through dialogue.

The Open Source Thesis is that the values of this medium need to be incorporated into policy, that its reach needs to be extended, and that its business models need to be adopted. That's how we can stop digging the hole we're now digging for ourselves.

And if we start talking about that, rather than what Republicans want us to talk about, we'll start making sense to people. That doesn't mean talking about the Internet. It means talking about the values the Internet has made manifest -- about openness, about transparency, and about connectivity.

• Openness means listening, without artificial hierarchies.
• Transparency means being honest on every question,
• Connectivity means bringing the world back together again, rather than driving it apart.

Democrats can not only win with these values, they can govern with them. And that's what is important, governing in a way that brings about positive change.

That is the purpose of every political myth.