The Boxer Metaphor – Victor Davis Hanson reflects on Barbara Boxer and her treatment of Condi Rice

This is all haywire. According to the 1950s Democratic mythology that we all grew up with, the stereotypical aggressor in such an unfair exchange should have been a senior Southern reactionary male, replete with drawl and barely contained racist anger, who ambushes the upstart and distorts the record in an act of name-calling—before hitting the airwaves to besmirch her further and, finally, to cut and paste the exchange into crass political ads to raise money for his own entrenched sinecure.

What in the world has happened to us?

Democratic idealism that once alone gave the nation its needed social safety net, civil rights legislation, and environmental protection is becoming ossified and in danger of ensuring a permanent party of strident second-guessing and deductive furor at the loss of almost all political power. A majority of the state legislatures and governorships is lost. The Senate is lost. The House is lost. The Presidency is lost—the Supreme Court almost. Whether Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, or Alberto Gonzales, ‘minorities’ no longer have any need of liberal gate-keepers—or of a particular patron like Barbara Boxer.