You can be pissed or President, but not both.

"Angry people are not nice people. They are people to stay away from. They explode now and then," said George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His book "Don't Think of an Elephant" has become something of a bible for Democrats trying to improve their communication with voters. Political history is dotted with failed presidential candidates perceived by the voters as too angry -- think of Howard Dean's famous scream in 2004, or Bob Dole admonishing George H.W. Bush in 1988 to "stop lying about my record." Each party's most revered figures in recent years, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, projected optimism and hope. The latest example of the anger strategy came Sunday, when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said on ABC that Mrs. Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger." He cited comments she made in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day in which she likened the Republican-led House to a "plantation" and called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history. "I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates," he said.

Democrats disagree--what a surprise, but they are as usual, quite wrong. Anger is a turn-off unless you are angry about the same things, and the reality is that most Americans are not angry.