There's this idea that when you are on the attack, you're winning. Mean works. As contemptuous as you can get, that's as contemptuous as you should be.

I think it's all Zell Miller's fault. He gave a speech that was a spittle-laced, just-short-of-unhinged attack on John Kerry last election as part of an incredibly negative GOP convention, and the convention seemed to work. John Kerry's "negatives" went up, George W. Bush took a lead in the polls, and Kerry could never catch up. It didn't matter that the attacks were mostly lies and smears against a tremendously honorable man. It didn't seem to matter that the people delivering them had no particularly redeeming qualities of warmth or grace. Mean worked.

So, the GOP went back to the well last night. But they missed the real reason why they were able to smear John Kerry so successfully. It wasn't being mean that worked, it was being on message.

Every speaker advanced the same basic lie about John Kerry, a "for it before he was against it" line designed to cover up Bush's weakness by trying to portray Kerry as indecisive and weak. The meanness, the contempt seemed tied to a specific reason for contempt of that single person they were trying to defeat. And while people may have not particularly liked Zell Miller, thought he was too mean, they were left with a lasting negative impression of JK.

Which takes us to last night. During the speeches last night, I, like many others, flashed back to 2004 and thought this may be more effective than I thought. I mean, I found the whole thing to be incredibly hate-filled and alienating, but, if it worked in 2004, then maybe it'd work again.

And then I woke up this morning, and I honestly couldn't remember a single thing they attacked about. Oh, I could recall a few specifics if I really searched my memory, but the overall impression was only, "Boy, they really hate Obama." Which, frankly, just isn't good enough as a political attack. The overriding impression is just one of anger. I remember the attackers rather than the attack. This is not good.

Especially when paired with the second impression: "they are really contemptuous of a lot of Americans." The attacks seemed not tied to a specific candidate or a specific trait in that candidate, but instead it was just a soaring, bellicose anger directed outward and egged on by the delegates in the hall.

Really, the only things that really stuck with me were the bizarre derision of community organizing and a single moment from Rudy Giuliani. Rudy said, when talking about the story of Barack Obama, "Only in America." And he used it contemptuously.

Well, you know what Rudy? Screw you. "Only in America" is one of our proudest traditions. There's a freedom to strive and achieve here that really is different than much of the world. We have had one of the most complicated and at times brutal histories of race relations of any country, and yet we now have an African-American son of a single mom as the leader of our country's majority party. That's pretty damn cool. And, yeah, it's only in America.

In the convention last night, the effect was not so much a contempt of Obama as it was a contempt for an entire vision of America, a vision that's part of the fabric of the American Dream. Community organizing, pluralism, tolerance, compassion, respect, humility, optimism, the rule of law, a self-made man, all of it was subject to a sneering derision. Unless you were white, from a small town, loved country music, and hated everyone else, there was almost nothing for you. Well, unless you are an oil exec who wants more oil leases to sit on and boost your balance sheet. Then they were chanting sweet nothings just for you.

The speech people should be thinking of is not Zell Miller, but Pat Buchanan. Buchanan's 1992 culture war-cry has been widely considered as a major factor in George H.W. Bush's defeat to Bill Clinton. It was exclusionary and angry, and it turned many people off. It was, like last night, not so much an attack on Bill Clinton as an attack on whole swaths of America.

So, forget the pundits, and forget the snap judgments. Many people in 1992 thought Buchanan's speech was a success because it "rallied the base." It was only later that the impression of an angry party intent on pushing its narrow views on the country took hold and became the lasting legacy from that speech.

I suspect that's what we'll be saying about last night in a couple of months.

update: Here's Roland Martin on CNN getting angry about the attack on community organizers: