George Will on the Sheehan Kerfuffle

she is symptomatic of something that in 2008 could cause the Democratic Party a sixth loss in eight presidential elections. That something is a shrillness unlike anything heard, in living memory, from a major tendency within a major party.

Many warmhearted and mildly-attentive Americans say the president should have invited Sheehan to his kitchen table in Crawford for a cup of coffee and a serving of that low-calorie staple of democratic sentimentality -- ``dialogue.'' Well.

Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a ``lying bastard,'' ``filth spewer,'' ``evil maniac,'' ``fuehrer'' and the world's ``biggest terrorist'' who is committing ``blatant genocide'' and ``waging a nuclear war'' in Iraq . . . .

Do Democrats really want to embrace her variation of the Michael Moore and ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' school of political discourse? Evidently, yes, judging by the attendance of 12 Democratic senators at that movie's Washington premiere in June 2004, and by the lionizing of Moore at the Democratic Convention -- the ovation, the seating of him with Jimmy Carter.