The passion of the Clinton haters is a phenomenon without equal in recent American politics.
The words tumble out, the hands gesture urgently, as Jonathan Chait explains why he hates George W. Bush.
It’s Bush’s radical policies, says the 31-year-old New Republic writer, and his unfair tax cuts, and his cowboy phoniness, and his favors for corporate cronies, and his heist in Florida, and his dishonesty about his silver-spoon upbringing, and, oh yes, the way he walks and talks.
For some of his friends, Chait says at a corner table in a downtown Starbucks, “just seeing his face or hearing his voice causes a physical reaction — they have to get away from the TV. My sister-in-law describes Bush’s existence as an oppressive force, a constant weight on her shoulder, just knowing that George Bush is president.”
….
… Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time, sees the anti-Bush “contempt and disdain giving way to a hatred that is near pathological. . . .
Based on my longstanding, highly unscientific, but altogether convincing (to me) reading the pulse of American politics, the liberals’ hatred of Bush not only exceeds in breadth and depth the conservatives’ hatred of Clinton (present and past); it actually exceeds the conservatives’ hatred of Clinton AND the liberals’ hatred of Nixon combined.
John their hatred of Bush is really very understandable and reasonable. After all, when a blithering idiot like George Bush is able to trick the voters into electing him rather than the two intellectuals who ran against him you must realize how frustrating that is to the Democrats.
Oh, what
Krauthammer is right, all except for the ‘near’ part.
For the real low-down on Bush hatred, you’ve got to visit Liberal Larry’s site, BlameBush!
http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/
Because Bush is to Blame for Everything!
It’s hilarious.
Wait till we get our talk radio going.
It seems to me that the conservatives dislike of Clinton was pretty specific and had more to do with thinking the man was dishonest.
The hatred of Bush seems to be at least in part driven by his policies. The funny thing is, most Conservatives and Libertarians aren’t too happy with Bush’s big government vison either but the Democrat’s won’t put a moderate forward.
Could it be that the Democrats don’t like Bush because he shows just how weak they are? It is one thing to get beat by the heavy-weight champion of the world. It is another thing altogether to get beat by someone who should be beatable but who has the good fortune to have stupid opponents.
I never did think that most of the conservatives around me hated Clinton. They just felt he should resign from office because of his actions.
So which is worse, to dislike a politician because of his character or his stand on the issues?
I have to admit, when I hear Bush speaking on the TV, it makes me cringe- but I voted for him!!
Ironically, I was at U-Michigan at the same time Jonathan Chait was a writer for the Michigan Daily. Having met him a few times, I’d say he’s intellectually honest.
Indeed, in 1994 (a year after I graduated), he wrote a piece for the Michigan Independent (my understanding is that he left the Daily to work for a newer progressive magazine that didn’t really take off) criticizing one of the first releases of the “Michigan Student Study”. I just recently rediscovered that work in my files, and will eventually post something about it on my website (since it relates to the internal documents on the MSS, documents which Chait couldn’t have had access to, that I wrote about in the Wall St. Journal). Although Chait’s attack came from a liberal angle that the University use of the study was covering up real racial tension (the fine line that diversity advocates have to walk is that some tension is necessary for educational benefit, but too much tension could nullify that benefit), he did an effective job criticizing the methodology.
I have to disagree, John.
I think the hatred is similar; it’s just that
(A) As the Clinton era recedes into history, memories of the emotions fade.
(B) Because the media is liberal, Bush hatred gets a wider airing. The conservate media is in its ghetto, so the excessive hatred (e.g. the videotapes claiming the Clintons killed lots of people) was written off as coming from extremists who could be ignored.