Richard Clarke’s book “Against All Enemies” that criticizes the Bush Administration’s role in the war on terror is already No. 1 on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Does that spell trouble for Mr. Bush’s re-election? Maybe not, says Alan Murray in this Wall Street Journal ($) column today:

The Amazon Web site says the Clarke book is being bought by the same readers who’ve already purchased titles like “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth” by liberal journalist Joe Conason, and “The Lies of George W. Bush” by liberal journalist David Corn. Those books, in turn, are sold to folks who’ve already read Michael Moore’s “Dude, Where’s My Country?” and Al Franken’s “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” This is a group that already believes George W. Bush is the nation’s prevaricator-in-chief, that he plundered working families to fatten the wallets of his CEO cronies, and that his major contribution to the war on terror was secretly shuttling bin Laden’s relatives out of the country. In comparison, Mr. Clarke’s charge — that the president didn’t pay enough attention to terrorism before Sept. 11 — is almost quaint.

Mr. Murray goes on to point out a disturbing trend in American political discourse:

To Mr. Hannity, all Democrats are “appeasers” and “moral relativists” — members of a political party that “has become unhinged.” Mr. Savage goes further, tagging Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean as the “modern-day descendants of Benedict Arnold.” Al Franken labels Republicans as “Chicken hawks” and racists, while Michael Moore blames President Bush himself — as well as those of us who drive SUVs — for fomenting terror.
Why write such tirades? Because they sell. . .

The bipolar bestseller list is just one more symptom of the disease that now infects American politics. The nation is becoming increasingly polarized. The left and the right view each other with distrust and disdain — even though their policy proposals often remain strikingly similar. Sane compromise in the center has become all but impossible.
The media — defined broadly — plays a big role in this unfortunate trend. The problem is not the power of “big media” — as some would have you believe. Rather, it is the unprecedented power of consumers to choose exactly what kind of media they wish to receive. Conservatives can get their news by watching Sean Hannity’s television show at night, listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show during the day, and creating a customized Internet newspaper that caters to all their biases — “The Daily Me,” as computer guru Nicholas Negroponte calls it. Liberals can do much the same — even more so after tomorrow, when Mr. Franken and friends launch Air America, a liberal radio network. Both sides have their prejudices constantly reinforced; neither has to confront the challenge of opposing views.
That leaves little tolerance for the kind of balanced, bipartisan inquiry that former Rep. Lee Hamilton and former Gov. Thomas Kean were trying to conduct last week. More power to them; they are members of a dying breed.