Confidence Makes The Difference

Dotty Lynch is CBSNews.com's Political Points columnist. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points

"The whole reason for leaving is to fight in a new arena and be more effective outside the House than I could have been inside the House...It's driving the conservative cause. It's going out and energizing the base," said the embattled Texan. "It's energizing the Republican Party across the nation. It's helping elect Republicans and more importantly, helping defeat Democrats."

He criticized his Republican colleagues for "panic, depression and woe-is-me-ism," and said they would lose control of the Congress "if they continue the attitude they have right now."

"Confidence," a book by Harvard Business School professor, Rosabeth Kanter, argues that it is confidence that makes the difference between winning and losing and those who win are those who expect to win, a thesis similar to DeLay's.

Kanter applies her model to sports teams, corporations and countries but she may have a lot to offer politicians as well.

Republicans would seem to be classic examples of her argument that success breeds success but her chapter on Winning Streaks That End may be instructive to them. She points out that all winners experience struggles and that "everything can look like failure in the middle."

Kanter cautions that for winners to climb back, they must face reality, avoid chaos under pressure and remember the fundamentals. She says confidence that forgets its underpinnings turns into arrogance —and that's when winning streaks are over.

The Democrats - who want victory so much they can taste it - still seem to be exhibiting a number of pathologies which Kanter says are characteristic of losing streaks: communication inside the organization decreases, criticism and blame increase, respect decreases, focus turns inward, rifts widen, and negativity spreads.

Talk to most Democratic consultants and all you hear these days is how awful Howard Dean is for spending money and resources stupidly despite the fact that Democrats are raising all kinds of new money in ways that Dean has pioneered.

Talk to Democratic elites and all you hear is how Hillary can't win and how awful it will be if she is the nominee despite the fact that she has a 54 percent positive rating and an intensely positive base of supporters. Liberal bloggers are really on her case.

Speaking of negativity and turning inward, the House Democratic leaders seem to be as focused on protecting turf as on winning new seats. (Protecting turf is another of Kanter's signposts for organizations on the downslide.)

Pelosi-bashing is rampant among Democrats, and the decision of her ally Jack Murtha to confront Steny Hoyer for Majority Leader if the Democrats win the House has generated more passion than talk of all the good things the Democrats could do for voters if they actually won.

The decision by Democrats to ramp up resources to take on Republican Senator George Allen looked like one of Kanter's "building stones" for winners. But the Democratic primary in Virginia which will be held this Tuesday has turned ugly and has exposed to soft underbelly of chronic Democratic losers.

National Democrats recruited former Navy Secretary Jim Webb to challenge Allen. Webb, the Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, has sided with Democrats on a number of military issues including opposition to the Iraq War and has long been a favorite of journalists and establishment Democrats.

Webb has been endorsed by prominent Democrats: Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durban. Even so, Harris Miller - a local Virginia Democrat - refused to roll over for Webb and has run a very aggressive and seemingly effective campaign on the grounds that Webb is not a real Democrat.

Now national Democrats are crying foul, saying that Miller has no right to run a strong campaign and are furious that Webb could lose to a proven campaigner. Go figure.

Two sure hallmarks of winning organizations, says Kanter, are teamwork and good moods.

Which of the major political parties does that sound like right now?

Is it possible they both could lose???