Those of us who once placed great hope in Al Gore as the moderate, pro-capitalist, pro-Israel, Southern future of the Democratic Party were disappointed again over the weekend with the news that Mr. Gore went to Saudi Arabia to claim that America’s behavior after the attacks of September 11, 2001 was “unforgivable.” It is the sort of thing that once would have been astonishing to hear from Mr. Gore but now – after the former vice president’s accusations that President Bush is a “moral coward” who is allied with “digital brownshirts” – is sadly expected. It’s symptomatic not only of Mr. Gore but of the contemporary Democratic Party, which has lost its bearings to the point where its chairman is Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, who was on television a few days ago warning that America was on the verge of turning into “a country like Iran where the president can do anything he wants.”

The Republicans aren’t exactly in a position to throw stones here. President Bush went on a walk through the bluebells in Crawford hand in hand with the Saudi prince, and in respect of the Iranian regime’s bid for an atomic weapon, he’s been so far (until yesterday, see above) hewing to a Kerry-like strategy of relying on France, Germany and a United Nations Security Council whose permanent members include Russia and Communist China. But neither has any member of the recent Republican leadership committed an affront of the kind that Mr. Gore has just done, attacking America from hostile soil. The Republicans clearly think they can touch a nerve with attacks on the “angry left,” which, according to the party’s chairman, includes Senator Clinton.

Anger can be a powerful force in politics, and sometimes a constructive one – we think of the California taxpayers’ revolt of Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13 in 1978, or the anger over crime that helped to propel Rudolph Giuliani into the mayoralty in New York. But it’s hard to sustain for long as the organizing principle of a major American political party, and the real danger for the Democratic politicians is that American voters – or even worse, America’s enemies abroad – will interpret their anger at the American administration as anger at America itself or at the majority of Americans who elected President Bush. That a party of patriots like Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson has reached the point where this is a serious concern marks how far the Democrats have fallen.