his is like being on the spin cycle at Procter & Gamble, trying to create a new jingle for Tide. Al Bore, er, Gore needs something that can tumble off his lips if he has any chance to win this election.
Columnists can sit at their terminals and intellectualize all they want about which presidential candidate has the best strategies for the economy, health care, education, and defense. But the reality is that this is a nation of attention deficit. Sound bites, slogans, and single sentences matter. Americans love it when their politicians leave short droppings that do not tax their brains, yet tell them everything they need to know about a candidate.
Already, George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, has gained tremendous mileage and the early lead in the polls partially because of his promises of ''compassionate conservatism.'' You liberals and lefties can snicker all you want, but the hard fact is that Bush put a fair amount of thought into this, meeting with academics and grassroots conservatives who work with the poor before making this a household phrase at the political breakfast table.
Suddenly, the Democrats have to fight for Latino voters and white women. Suddenly, the Democrats have to brew a pot of caffeine for even loyal Democrats. The damage of ''compassionate conservatism'' is in its stealth qualities. The phrase is not actually meant to energize loyal Republicans, and it's ultimate purpose is not even to get Latinos and white women. It's real purpose is to remove the aura of Republican meanness so that inert Democrats who need to be pushed to the polls stay home on Election Day, opting instead for Oprah, soaps, and the ballgame.
In the last 20 years, despite the fracturing of America's attention span through the explosion of cable TV and computers, the Republicans have been devishly good at phrases that either hit like lightning bolts or linger until they take on their own reality. Richard Nixon was known for representing the ''silent majority.'' Ronald Reagan surely destroyed the Democrats in the South in 1980 by going to Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were killed in the 1960s, and declared ''states rights.''
Reagan recited something that still reverberates in everything from local elections to the Oklahoma City bombing: ''Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'' Reagan and his aides even created phrases that energized opponents. His mouthing of ''constructive engagement'' with South Africa was so clearly a sellout to apartheid that it helped energize a worldwide protest movement against both the White House and South Africa.
Reagan's successor, George Bush the elder, was no Great Communicator like Reagan. Yet, in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention, he came up with ''a kinder and gentler nation'' and ''a thousand points of light.'' Liberals and lefties snickered. Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis even sneered at a debate, ''I don't know what a thousand points of light is.''
All Dukakis could offer was that the election was not about ideology but about competence. That was as exciting as a three-hour lecture by a computer technician. Bush ended up turning ''a thousand points of light'' into an annual award that people were actually honored to get at the State of the Union.
Now it is true that the Democrats have held the White House for the last eight years without any particular slogan worth remembering. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton said he was proposing a ''New Covenant'' with the American people. But that sounded too much like going to a Baptist church. He also tried ''Putting People First.'' But that died as everyone knows that both Democrats and Repubicans put PAC money first. You could make a small argument for ''It's the economy, stupid,'' but the reality was that Clinton relied on a personal magnetism with his origins as a poor boy that got him past a bored Bush in 1992 and a dull Bob Dole in 1996.
But now the Democrats have to contend with a Republican candidate whose buzz words threaten to act as a buzz saw against Democratic roots. So far, all the Democrats have been able to do, such as did vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman did in his acceptance speech Wednesday night, is keep invoke the 40-year-old ''New Frontier'' of John F. Kennedy.
The Democrats cannot win like that. Gore needs something new. What would be the opposite of ''compassionate conservatism''?
Could it be ''lean and mean liberalism?'' They could try something else like ''libidinousless liberals.'' Or ''scintillating centrism.'' Or ''The Moral Moderates.'' Or ''Just say no to Bush Lite.'' He could say he and Clinton rescued America from a ''Bush-league'' economy in 1992. He could ask, ''Do you want to return to the minors?'' Whatever Gore comes up with, he better come up with it quick, or Bush will send Gore to the minors.
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
