James's addiction: Carville can't stop giving the Democrats good advice.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie
• Position: On Political Books - Book Review

James Carville, a political consultant in real life who, oddly enough, also plays one on TV, has written a new book called Had Enough? A Handbook For Fighting Back. Apart from its cover, on which a black-eyed, band-aided yet still pugnacious Carville looks too much like a rough trade pinup boy, Had Enough? is a brilliant book, essential reading for anybody interested in the preservation of our democratic institutions. Nowhere in the book is his insight and acumen better demonstrated than in the passage where he advises those who share his philosophy to "arm yourself with facts and counter-arguments. There are a lot of places to do this, but as far as I'm concerned, the progressive must-read is a magazine called The Washington Monthly." Well said, Mr. Carville!

Now, while my editor goes out to buy some marble and a chisel, I will continue with the review.

Carville's greatest claim to fame, of course, is that he was Bill Clinton's campaign manager in 1992, a year when at first it seemed that the greatest stature a Democratic nominee could hope to achieve was to be the answer to a medium-hard "Jeopardy" question. Instead, Clinton was able to attack the first President Bush by framing issues in ways that made it seem that Clinton was in touch with our problems, and that Bush either didn't care, or was their author. So armed, Clinton smote the incumbent. It didn't hurt that the country was swaying through the aftershocks of a recession; but please recall that four years earlier when there were reasons to think that the Democrats were due for a victory, they responded to these favorable auguries by nominating Mr. Competence, not Mr. Ideology, and lost.

Clinton talked so much in that campaign that it is difficult to believe he was ever scripted; still, his ability to discuss issues and Carville's knack for framing them surely complemented one another. Reading Had Enough?, one can't help hearing the arguments made not in Carville's Cajun accent, but in Clinton's husky drawl. It's like looking at the sheet music of a song written by Cole Porter or Jerome Kern, and hearing Sinatra singing it in your head. One wonders what the 2004 political landscape would look like if a virtuoso candidate like Clinton were in the field, equipped with Carville's arrangements. Whatever virtues the Democratic candidates possess, when it comes to selling an issue, none of them is even Jerry Vale.

Had Enough? is a handbook for Democrats, one that can be used everywhere...