CLOSE YOUR EYES on some days, and you can almost believe it: You're back somewhere in the mid-1980s, 1984 to be precise. At least from the Democrats' side of the aisle. There it all is: The Republican president denounced as a dunce and a dangerous cowboy; the left on a tear against corporations and tax cuts; and the vast, murky war against a dangerous enemy, which Republicans think of as a crusade against evil and Democrats think is a sham. Magically, the three intervening elections--1992, 1996, and 2000--appear to have vanished, as have their protagonists: Bill Clinton is gone, as is the George W. Bush of 2000, gone in the moment he learned, on live cameras, that tower number two had been hit. We are back now in Reagan country, with deep divisions, big issues, deep feelings, big wars. And quite a few things are familiar. This is the way they equate.

l. THE PRESIDENT. Now, as in those days, there is a Republican president, a man of the West, detested in Europe and deeply despised by the base of the Democrats, who are driven to distraction by his mere presence. He is looked down on by them as a dupe or dullard, and portrayed, as Richard Wirthlin, Reagan's favorite pollster, once put it, as "dumb, dangerous, and a distorter of facts." Reagan was described also, by professional crony Clark Clifford, as an "amiable dunce." Bush should be so fortunate as to have the word amiable invoked in this way by

Despite all of this, or perhaps owing to it, Bush is nonetheless liked by the rest of the country, which gives him high marks for his leaderly qualities. Leadership and national security are his best issues. His weakest one seems to be the environment. Although his beloved ranch is run on the greenest of principles, the greens turn him down three to one. Repeatedly, they claim he has poisoned the air, poisoned the water, and is feeding small children a diet of arsenic. For these reasons, and others, they long to destroy him, and are united with the rest of the left in this great cause. "Ronald Reagan has provided all the unity we need," Gary Hart said at the 1984 Democratic convention. "Not one of us is going to sit this campaign out. You have made the stakes too high." But not high enough to impress most Americans, who remained less than outraged by the president.

Deep tranches of rage did not produce general anger with Reagan. Thus far, they have failed to do so with Bush.

2. POPULIST OUTRAGE. And you thought "two Americas" was a new theme dreamed up by John Edwards? Not quite. "We're becoming two Americas--one for the thin veneer of the wealthiest, who are doing better and better, and the other for the rest of America, who are doing less and less well." This was Walter Mondale, in early January 1984. He wasn't the only one who held these opinions. "The greatest collection of special interests in all American history had now assembled inside the cold citadel of privilege known as the Republican party," Ted Kennedy thundered at the party's convention. And there was the keynote address of Mario Cuomo, disputing the Reagan description of this country as a "shining city on a hill." "There's another city, another part of the city, the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one, where students can't afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. . . . In this part of the city, there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble . . . there is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see."