Once the picture is sufficiently gloomy, Bayh offers a glimmer of hope. He admits to having a sunny disposition (“I’m by nature an optimist. That’s just the way I’m wired”). And then he explains what this optimism did for Indiana. During his two terms as governor, Bayh brags, the state added more jobs than in any other eight-year period on record — and during his tenure, the Hoosier State had the largest budget surplus in state history. But Bayh didn’t just balance the books. Under his watch, Indiana also launched the 21st Century Scholars program, which guarantees low-income children full college scholarships if, in eighth grade, they sign and then keep a pledge promising to graduate from high school and not use drugs. Since the program started, Bayh says proudly, Indiana’s college-matriculation rate has risen from 40th to ninth in the US.
On to national security, where Democrats have an obligation, as Bayh puts it, to show voters that they can be both “tough and smart.” “Too many Democrats, when the issue of national security comes up, it’s, ‘Oh boy, change the subject,’ ” Bayh told a brunch meeting of the New Hampshire Young Democrats last weekend. “We can’t change the subject, even if we wanted to. Events won’t allow it; the Republicans won’t allow it. We need to take this issue on, and win on an issue that’s a part of their core strategy.” Here’s Bayh’s money line: The truth of the matter is, the Republicans have been one heck of a lot better about national-security politics than they have been about national-security policy. They may have won some elections. But the American people have lost ground.
Then it’s back to bipartisanship. Bush may have sold voters a bill of goods when he promised to be a uniter rather than a divider, Bayh says — but the fact is, that’s what the American people wanted then and still want today. And once Democrats understand that, they’ll start winning elections. “For those of you who think that the country is just irretrievably divided into Red and Blue, into Republicans and Democrats, into far left and far right, it doesn’t have to be that way,” Bayh said in Portsmouth. “We can be Americans together again, working to move this country forward again.”
Now for the Big Finish, which commences when Bayh asks an aide for some maps of Indiana, each broken down into 92 counties. One map shows returns from the 2004 presidential election: the darker the red, the stronger the tally for Bush. It’s really, really red. Another — which is really blue — shows Bayh’s tallies on the same day in his senatorial contest. Once the applause dies down, Bayh ratchets up the folksiness (“isn’t” becomes “idn’t”) and starts to drive home his message. “The moral of this map is, winning California by more idn’t gonna get the job done for us,” he told the New Hampshire Young Dems. “Winning New York by more, or other states that we win by a lot by more, idn’t gonna get us where we need to go.”
