At Orcinus, Sara Robinson (via) makes some great points about how to beat the bullies of Beltway High.

If I may nitpick, I think she’s a tad over-optimistic when she says: “it won’t take too much conscious effort to make our spokespeople look like serious grown-ups by contrast.”

IMHO, it’s an enormous challenge because, to the general public, Republicans — despite their petulance, naïveté, and incompetence — own all the imagery of paternalistic adulthood.

One just has to recall the 2004 VP debates, which were a dystopian remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, with Mr. Potter (Dick “gravitas” Cheney) lording it over George Bailey (John “migod he’s young, and an icky trial lawyer, to boot” Edwards).

This is a huge, uphill climb. It’s a vitally important one, but very, very hard. And we can count on the MSM to ramp up the steepness every step of the way, because they like the cartoonish view where the GOP represents Mom and Pop, and the Dems are the scruffy teengers. Mad’s Dave Berg may be dead, but we may be stuck with his old-school iconography for years to come.

Our two best shots at this are a speedy resolution to Operation Pandora, and winning the White House in 2008. Easier said then done, but we took care of business earlier this month, so let’s stay at our bloggerstations and keep trying to provide air cover as they go a-snipin’, like Chris Wallace did with this ugly attempted ambush of John Kerry.

Kerry did a respectable job holding his own against Wallace’s thoroughly unprofessional, mad-dog attack. But one might suggest that our 2008 candidates take a cue from Ms. Robinson, and crank it up a notch beyond statesmanlike dignity, in the fashion that Bill Clinton did in the same abattoir:

…the Kewl Kids must always be met with assertive speech and action that denies them the right to take space, energy, and dignity from us — and, at the same time, increases the risk that any attempt to humiliate us may result in their own on-camera humiliation. Bullies of all stripes tend to pick soft targets. Consistenly setting strong boundaries and defending them will make us far less interesting to pick on.