A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail titled, “George Bush’s resume.” Naturally, I… A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail titled, “George Bush’s resume.” Naturally, I assumed this meant the President was shopping around for better offers and wanted to sign on as my personal assistant.

Actually, it was a long list of dubious accomplishments, from a 1976 DUI arrest to a prescient sell-off of Harken Energy stock just before the company – on whose board of directors he served – nose-dived. Some of the items, like the DUI arrest and the stock deal, are matters of fact, trivial or damning depending on which side of political divide you stand.

Some, like the mention of Bush’s cheerleading days at Yale, are trivial no matter where you stand. Others, like the cuts in health-care benefits for war veterans and duty benefits for active-duty troops, should be a concern to everyone.

By the time I finished reading, I suspected this wasn’t George W. Bush’s real resume at all. The lengthy list is familiar to anyone who’s watched the news, ranging from the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to our own flouting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue useable atomic weapons.

My response was, “Yeah … and?”

There’s been a lot of talk recently, in activist circles and editorial pages, about the need to speak up and out about the policies of President Bush; the e-mail concludes, “Please send this to every voter you know.” With the election looming, the tone is more frantic, the need to “get out the message” more dire.

Unfortunately, no one seems to know what the message should be, and the notion of ‘speaking up’ paints the problem as one of volume rather than coherence, as though parroting the same lines grows more persuasive with an increase in decibels.

Some of the shrillness is just exasperation. Nothing seems to stick to The Teflon Cowboy, and that’s frustrating. No matter how many lists of cynical voter manipulation, bowing to corporate interests and incompetent diplomacy you circulate, the numbers just don’t seem to move. In the latest polls, the country looks like 2000, divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

Radical presidents tend to radicalize the country, and even most conservatives agree that Bush is a radical leader – the disagreement is over whether that’s a good thing. But as each side digs in its heels, true believers in each camp become more entrenched, making it nearly impossible to move political lines. And as each side gets louder and more abusive – or more plaintive – new voters increasingly wash their hands of the whole process.

Which is why speaking up is not enough. The belief seems to be that people don’t know where President Bush is leading the country, that they’ve been duped by the Bush media-spin cycle. Not only is this take incredibly condescending, reducing every voter to that mythical “Joe Sixpack” or “Joe Nascar” who doesn’t pay attention but votes nonetheless, but it’s also ineffective.

Witness the reaction to the disappearing WMDs. In December, President Bush basically shrugged off the need to find any, since Saddam had been captured. Polling shows most of America shrugged along with him. Many activists and Democrats would like to believe the botched weapons search is a serious issue. America, seemingly, thinks it’s a non-starter.

Speaking up is only the first part of building a credible opposition to Karl Rove and the Republicans (the name of my new death metal band) in November. Most of the facts that Democrats want to address are already on the table. We’ve been watching the Iraq war, the Valerie Plame probe and the state of the economy. We know about the corporate influence and the disregard for the environment. The information is out there, and while most people have already chosen sides, that doesn’t mean it’s time to start screaming to the choir while complaining that no one else is listening.

The difficulty in taking on any sitting president, especially this one, is that the Presidency and America are so often synonymous. There’s still an aura there, and anyone whose mind is made up can dismiss complaints about the president as attacks on America.

The Democrats need to tease apart the two ideas – this president and American ideals – and show that they are not one and the same. That means more than making lists and speaking out. It goes beyond advertising and brand management, into talking about ideas for the future of the country. Yes, you’ve given us the lists; you’ve spoken up and out about how bad Bush is for America. Now tell us why you’re better.

Jesse Hicks is a columnist for The Pitt News. He can be reached at