Matt Stoller has a post on the evolution of his political thinking:

Over the past few years, I've gone through a sort of journey. When I started in politics, I thought that the problem was Bush, and that if we could only go back to Clinton it would be alright. Then when Bush's actions didn't explain our predicament, since the war was prosecuted so badly and under such false premises, I considered the right-wing message machine and their fealty to power and the raw emotional narcotic of fear. Then when that didn't explain our situation, I turned to the the media, since surely they should have punctured the lies. Then when that didn't explain the actions of those who knew the truth but acted against it anyway, I turned to the Democratic leadership and local party machines. Yet that doesn't make sense either as a total explanation, for there are people of tremenous integrity in and out of the party.

So I think the only answer to why we are where are as a country, and the judgment history will render, is that all of us, progressive or not, but all of us as citizens are in our own ways responsible for what has happened.

The basic idea is that one of the worst things that happened to this country over the last several years is the blurring of the line between what is political and what is government, typified, of course, by Karl Rove’s role in the White House. As John DiIulio, the guy Bush picked to run his faith-based initiatives program, famously said:

There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus… What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm.

As a result, we -- as citizens -- now have to keep an eye on everything little coming out of every office in Washington, and interpret it this light. Unfortunate, but it has to be done. What I’m starting to see is the matter with this approach is that not everything that happens in Washington is political -- there’s a lot of running the country stuff that happens in a non-political context. When we interpret everything that happens in government though a political lens, it comes out all warped and difficult to understand.

This might shed some light on something that Matt has talked about lately – the appeal of John McCain to Democrats. Matt’s right that it’s crazy for anybody who considers him or herself a Democrat to vote for John McCain for president. But yet the Zogby poll that Matt talks about says that 53% of Democrats would be more likely to support a candidate based on a McCain endorsement. I think that one way of understanding why that might be the case is to consider distinguishing between John McCain, senator, and John McCain, presidential candidate.

Observing McCain from the other side of the Hill, I’ve found him to be a senator who stands on principle more often than most. He seems to work hard at his job. Since I believe in principled leadership and the honor of government service, these things are important to me. There are members of Congress who I am more aligned with politically who fail these basic tests. So I, even as a strong progressive, can look at John McCain and feel a certain amount of appreciation for him.

Now, that said, I would never ever never never vote for him for President. Never. As a President – a political position -- he’d be just awful.

One possible way of reducing McCain’s appeal to Democrats is to say that McCain is bad through and through. And as a politician, we’re probably right. But people judge with their own eyes that, no, McCain seems to be an all right. And as a government official, they’re probably right. The cognitive dissonance between what we say and what people see ends up confusing them so much that they pull out of the process. They end up voting for people on the basis of who they think that they can trust. And that ends up being John McCain. Or George Bush. Twice.

I admit that this is still at the stage of fuzzy thinking, but I think there’s something to it.