I’m back from a week in California (Big Sur and San Francisco), where I soaked up good food, good wine and Nancy Pelosi values. Deprived of my usual North Carolina political diet, I indulged in HBO’s “Recount” about the 2000 Florida election theft.

On the flight back Sunday, I read The New Yorker profile of weird Republican operative Roger Stone, the body-builder Beau Brummell best known for the sex-swap scandal involving his wife and himself in the 90s.

There’s a connection here: Ruthless Republicans.

That’s no indictment. It’s praise.

Bush won the 2000 election because Jim Baker ruthlessly focused on winning, while Warren Christopher wanted to play fair.

Stone says McCain can win in 2008 only with a “slash and burn” campaign that paints Obama and his wife as weak elitists.

I admire Obama for wanting to “change the world” and “save the planet.”

But Democrats too often think that politics should be a civics exercise in good government as prescribed by political science professors.

As Stone’s hero, Richard Nixon, said: Losers don’t legislate.

* * *

A footnote:

There is a telling contrast in “Recount” that may explain what happened in 2000. It’s a lesson for everyone in politics.

The Jim Baker character explains his devotion to the cause by describing how George Bush the Elder recruited Baker for his first Senate race. Baker’s wife had died, and Bush didn’t like seeing his friend sad. So Bush kept Baker busy. “That’s a good friend,” a Baker underling observes.

The contrast: The Michael Whouley and Ron Klain characters laugh when one confesses in a bar that he doesn’t even like Al Gore.

The moral: Politics is personal. That’s why it’s ruthless.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.