What If They Gave A Scandal And No One Came?
James Bowman has a nice piece in The New Criterion called The Bush Junta. Best part:
Or of those who want to bring down the president and who are at least as unscrupulous as they represent him as being about the means to their favored end. At the least, they have made the easy, post-Clintonian assumption that accusations of bad faith against one's political opponents are all just part of the cut-and-thrust of politics in twenty-first-century America and not, as in fact they are, a poisoning of the wells of civic culture. Virtually since the day he took office, Bush has been repeatedly, almost routinely, accused of dishonesty in matters of political and economic substance by the likes of Paul Krugman, Jonathan Chait, and Michael Kinsley, and no one seems disposed to suggest that such accusations are or ought to be outside the bounds of civilized discourse.He may be wrong about one thing though. I'm not sure this kind of political nastiness hasn't always been the norm.
(Via Craig Schamp.)
The big discussion in Blog-land seems to be whether or not the Bush-haters are as rabid as the Clinton-haters.
Jonah Goldberg seems to think the Bush-haters are more rabid. Seems to me he should check first with his mommy and get back to us on that one.
Yeah, his mom can be funny but she's kinda nuts.
It's not that the Bush haters are more rabid, it's that there are more of them.
The rabid Clinton haters were always just a thin fringe element. The rabid Bush haters are actually tilting the Democratic party these days.
Hatred of incumbant Presidents is something we've always had with us - hard as it may be to believe, but even George Washington was attacked in very strong terms by his opponents.
Sometimes this hatred becomes a pretty well embedded thing; FDR had a cadre of haters, so did JFK. Nixon, of course, created his haters with a dilligence not normally seen in politics. Clinton bashers were propelled into large numbers by the daily annurism we GOPers got just by looking at him.
The hatred of GW, however, is trancending anything I've ever come across. The plain fact of the matter is that the haters of GW want to see the United States suffer just so they may have more reason to hate GW.
Its really getting asinine. I mean, the Vince Foster murder mystery was nothing compared to the conspiracy theory bullshit the GW haters are buying into just because it feeds their hatred...I've actually run across people who seriously post accusations that GW's grandfather financed the rise of the Nazis. This is the level to which they have descended.
Er, you are aware that Prescott Bush did have assets seized under the Trading With The Enemy Act in 1944, no?
Anyway, the reason folks on the Left hate Bush is because he's a lying bastard who sends our children off to die in order to fulfill his oedipal fantasies while bankrupting our government and giving favors to his supporters at the ongoing expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the taxes we pay. His Attorney General consistently argues that American citizens are not worthy of Constitutional protections -- or that the Constitution should simply be suspended indefinitely in times of armed conflict. In short, the Left hates Bush because Bush hates the ideals the Left holds and works hard to implement his vision.
Kimmitt
I guess that is one way to look at the actions of our President. Of course, I could say that the we went to war because Saddam was aiding and abbetting Terrorists (Hamas, PLO and Al Queda (how do you spell that), that they had a WMD program in place, and it is not a far reach to say they would supply to terrorist. By acting pre-emptively the equation changes in the Middle East, suddenly we no longer need to support the house of Saud, the Baath party in Syria no longer has support, sources of funding for Terrorists have dried up. Exactly how is our water getting worse? Are air? Seems that many of the recommended EPA changes will bring about cleaner plants, giving them incentives to Modernize. I got that from the New Republic, hardly a pro bush rag. Exactly who is being taken away in the dark of night by Ashcroft officials, you mean all those illegal Arab aliens. And that compares with the internment of Americans of Japaneses descent in WW2 how. In fact many of the ideals the left holds are in direct opposition of the US constitition, starting with Affirm Action. The ideals of the left are what exactly, the state knows best? Equality of result? Is Bush perfect, hell no, I wish he didn't sign the largest farm bill in history, a bill loaded by democrat and republicans alike, the education bill etc. The first and foremost job of the President is to defend the country - he is doing that.
Kevin,
Don't waste your time on him anymore; he's just spouting the official crazy-left (as opposed to normal liberal/left) religious position on Bush.
I've heard almost exactly the same rant from the same kind of people. It would be funny how they all carbon-copy each other if it weren't so pathetic...
The folks at The New Republic, no Bush fans, had a good article a while ago laying out why the Bush record on the environment was actually quite excellent. Can't find it at the moment (okay, I'm lazy) but they're absolutely right. This President's environmental record is excellent--better than the Clinton record, in fact.
The rabid hatred of Bush drives people to overlook every good thing he's done, and grossly exaggerate the questionable into something evil.
The funny part about Kimmitt's message? I can't tell if it's a joke or not. It's such a fabulous parody--if it's parody. If it's not, then it's even funnier.
Dean,
Methinks it wasn't parody - and it does show that I'm not kidding around here: this guy has not only read the paranoid conspiracy theories, he apparantly believes them...though, I note with great care, he doesn't go into detail about them because their patent absurdity would be ripped to pieces be all and sundry here.
I think it's even more sinister. I don't think the Left cares one whit about the soldiers who have died in service, I think they are upset that a Republican president has had the political guts to make the hard decision to do the right thing. Clinton's press-op war in Bosnia doesn't count, and we all saw what happened in Somalia. Rather than take action when the military barracks at Khobar Towers was bombed, Clinton sat idle. Rather than take meaningful action when our embassies were bombed, Clinton sat idle and let a handful of missiles give our enemies the impression that we are too weak to defend ourselves in person. Rather than take action when the USS Cole was attacked, Clinton offered soothing words and an olive branch.
It was the same when the economy began to tank (do the Lefties who have chastised Bush over the economy's performance remember that?) in 2000. Clinton sat idle while musing "things will pick up." It was all part of his strategy: Keep the hair combed perfectly, let someone else do the hard work.
We've now got a president who does the hard work, and the Left can't stand it. And were it not so sinister, it would be hilarious to watch.