Bredesen in the (national) news

Now that TN's Governor has made the cover of a national left-wing magazine of record, the talk about his national prospects has started. Bill Hobbs, Matthew White and Glenn Reynolds are all over this so I won't be. However, there are some bits from a Chattanooga Times-Free Press interview that are interesting (I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to link it):

"The governor said he does want to help the Democratic Party, and as a member of the executive committee of the Democratic Governors Association he had a chance to tell Democrats what’s wrong with the national organization.
The party suffers from an identity crisis, he told candidates for national party chairman during a meeting in Atlanta earlier this month [and] he has "no desire to be a member of a party that represents the hopes and dreams of a bunch of special interests."

Democrats won't like that, but he's making sense.

"Gov. Bredesen said Americans re-elected Republican President George W. Bush because, right or wrong, people knew where he stood. And the governor said he can describe a typical Republican voter in 30 words.
"If you asked me what the Republican Party stands for, I would say a traditional view of family. No gay marriage. No abortion. A gun over the mantelpiece. Church as a centerpiece of life. Low taxes. It’s a very assertive view of American interests abroad," he said. "You can agree or disagree, but it’s a coherent world view."
He said Democrats would be hard-pressed to describe their own rank-and-file using 60 or 90 or 120 words.
"Until we as Democrats get focused on what we are for, as opposed to ‘we need to vote Democrat because we are not Republicans,’ we will always be marginalized," he said. "That kind of position is a loser in business and a loser in politics."

Again, that's a cold shower for the Democrats I know, but he's trying to help them.

"Gov. Phil Bredesen said there are two "safe" assumptions about his future: He won’t seek national office or a job in Washington, D.C., and he will run for re-election in 2006."

The second part of that statement is true.

UPDATE: Tim Chavez wrote a very insightful piece related to this topic on Sunday.