It’s time for Barack Obama to get angry. Not as a black man, but as an American. Because too much is at stake if he doesn’t. The Bush Administration, with Dick Cheney in the role of the Wizard of Oz, has taken us down a path that menaces not just our own people but the entire world, and they are not turning back. Righteous anger is the correct response, and the only one that can save us.

Follow up:

As Dorothy Rodham said to little Hillary, you can’t let the bullies get away with it. This time, Obama needs to listen to Mrs. Rodham and to Hillary Clinton and not to whoever assures him that nobody will listen to an angry black man. Sucking it up didn’t even work for John Kerry, and he was white. The Republican Party has slimed us, and if Democrats don’t fight back, independents can only assume that we accept it.

Even if the bully is an aging war hero. Even if the bully is a woman with young children. They must be confronted when they portray the American people as a bunch of weak, co-dependent whiners and themselves as shining reformers. Whatever mettle McCain showed in 2000 has long since eroded. He is desperate and, as his choice of a running mate shows, ruthless beyond measure.

Watching the Republican Convention, I was struck by what a narrow constituency it seemed to attract. But the delegates who show up in the hall mouthing support for the most right-wing party platform Republicans have ever adopted are only the tip of the iceberg that cannot let go of power in Washington: lobbyists for defense contractors, for drug companies, for agribusiness, for oil and “clean” coal, and for toxic chemicals. These same lobbyists will of course try to influence a Democratic administration, but with Republicans they get a free ride, and don’t think they don’t know it. And then there’s the constituency that need not show its face: the Federalist Society; Zionist zealots and the Christian rapture-seekers. Let’s not forget those who prey on the financial turmoil Republicans have created and would avoid taxes on their windfall.

Yet, when the air had cleared, Democrats were still high on their Denver exuberance, and the Republicans whistled right past them with their tar and feathers and quarter-truths. As Obama said this week, all the slings and arrows are just a distraction from a debate they know they can’t win. He needs to say it louder. And he needs a hundred surrogates who will carry his message. States Democratic Chair Howard Dean had brought into play once again are looking less playable.

Even if Obama wins, I don’t expect the waters to part and Democrats to walk in to the promised land. If the elections of 2006 showed us anything it's that the Democratic party now reacts timidly to the will of the people. We are still in Iraq, and extricating ourselves while addressing the very real threats to our security is far more delicate than attacking a dictator. As we speak, the U.S. is trying to provoke war in Iran with a bipartisan assist.

The American people—and not just Democrats—must be shown that another four years of military aggression on the same course will not make us more secure, that ignoring the damage we are doing to the planet on which we live is lethal. And the two issues are linked: it’s not where we get the oil so much as how much of it we burn. “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Republicans chanted, mimicking the cry of black militants of the sixties who cried, “Burn, Baby, Burn!” Drilling more means burning more, and the damage we do to the environment on the way down is every bit as damaging as a riot.

And there are more reasons for the American people to be angry:

• Poverty afflicts 13.5 children, and 9.4 million of them have no health insurance http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=priorities_endchildpoverty Roughly 30 million adults have no health insurance either, and John McCain seems to think these problems can be solved by adjustments in the marketplace.

• Our endless and destructive war on drugs fuels the imprisonment of more people than any nation in the free world

• Our failing schools have grown no better from Republican “reforms,” in part because some were misguided, in part because none were properly funded.

• In spite of every indication that a majority supports Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Republicans are determined to privatize them and thus give Wall Street more money to play with.

• The next president will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will decide not only the fate of women’s right to abortion but of the powers the Executive has grabbed over the last eight years. Female or male, your civil liberties are in jeopardy.

John McCain implies that ending pork barrel spending in Congress will clean up Washington. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if every earmark project were eliminated, we would still be stuck with the mega-million dollar no-bid contracts Republicans have handed to Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root and Blackwater. When John McCain demands that we “win” this war, he never mentions the volunteer army that has been overtaxed beyond any in recent American memory. He never mentions that these troops survive on meager income and operate under military codes of conduct, neither of which apply to private forces. Then there are the giveaways created by privatization of traditional government services on everything from communications to feeding our troops. For the first time in many years, some Republicans worry that the military vote might split.

A German woman approached me at a party I attended to watch Obama’s acceptance speech. Why were there only 100 people, she demanded, when 200,000 Germans went into the streets to support him? (With Obama-like patience I told her that ours was only one of many parties and she moved on.) But it must seem odd to people all over the world that we can’t see what an embarrassment Republicans have made of us.

Michelle Obama seems to get it. Maybe she can convince Barack and the rest of us.