There could be no worse message for Iraq. If the victors owe nothing to the losers in elections, there, then Iraq can never be anything more than “Iran’s dysfunctional little friend”, as Maureen Dowd of the New York Times recently described it. That is because Iraq is 60% Shi’i – enough to win every national election but not enough to force their whole will on the rest of Iraq without help from Iran. Yet the winner-take-all poison is the example of democracy that Bush projects from America for Iraq, and since Bush only tolerates true believers in his agenda, purveyors of this poison are the only kind of advisers he sends to Iraq. A recipe for disaster, plain and simple.

The lesson here is not subtle or little known, really. The “winner-take-all” approach is the most common cause of failing and failed democracy. Today, democracy is on the ropes in, for instance, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan, for this very reason. Many democracies have died of it in the past. But then this is not the first non-subtle point that the Bush Administration has missed. It may be too late for the current effort for democracy in Iraq, although I sincerely hope not.

Bush’s approach to democracy could prove fatal to even the U.S., in the long run. We could die of the same poison he has administered to Iraq. He has escalated us towards a vision of democracy in which the winners owe nothing to the losers. De-escalation is rare in history and it is very difficult to accomplish. Yet if we can’t de-escalate, we will sooner or later join the ranks of the failed and failing democracies, ourselves. If we Democrats win the next presidential election, we will want revenge for eight years of Bush. The first step towards any possible de-escalation, however, will demand that we forget about revenge. Otherwise, we will promote the new American political culture of “winner-take-all”, and thus pick up the project of destroying our democracy where Bush left off.