Posted on 09/16/2003 3:48:13 PM PDT by .cnI redruM
Bill Moyers may have his politics, but his deferential demeanor and almost avuncular television style made him the Mr. Rogers of American politics. So when he leaves his neighborhood to go to a "Take Back America" rally and denounces George W. Bush's "government of, by and for the ruling corporate class," leading a "right-wing wrecking crew" engaged in "a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States way of governing," you know that something is going on.
That something is the unhinging of the Democratic Party. Democrats are seized with a loathing for President Bush a contempt and disdain giving way to a hatred that is near pathological unlike any since they had Richard Nixon to kick around. An otherwise reasonable man, Julian Bond of the N.A.A.C.P., speaks of Bush's staffing his Administration with "the Taliban wing of American politics." Harold Meyerson, editor at large of The American Prospect, devotes a 3,000-word article to explaining why Bush is the most dangerous President in all of American history his only rival being Jefferson Davis.
The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from. Bush's manner is not particularly aggressive. He has been involved in no great scandals, Watergate or otherwise. He is, indeed, not the kind of politician who radiates heat. Yet his every word and gesture generate heat a fury and bitterness that animate the Democratic primary electorate and explain precisely why Howard Dean has had such an explosive rise. More than any other candidate, Dean has understood the depth of this primal anti-Bush feeling and has tapped into it.
Whence the anger? It begins of course with the "stolen" election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy. But that is only half the story. An illegitimate President winning a stolen election would be tolerable if he were just a figurehead, a placeholder, the kind of weak, moderate Republican that Democrats (and indeed many Republicans) thought George Bush would be, judging from his undistinguished record and tepid 2000 campaign. Bush's great crime is that he is the illegitimate President who became consequential revolutionizing American foreign policy, reshaping economic policy and dominating the political scene ever since his emergence as the post-9/11 war President.
Before that, Bush could be written off as an accident, a transitional figure, a kind of four-year Gerald Ford. And then came 9/11. Bush took charge, declared war, and sent the country into battle twice, each time bringing down enemy regimes with stunning swiftness. In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a singular act of presidential will.
That will, like it or not, has remade American foreign policy. The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy is the subtitle of a new book by two not very sympathetic scholars, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay. The book is titled America Unbound. The story of the past two years could just as well be titled Bush Unbound. The President's unilateral assertion of U.S. power has redefined America's role in the world. Here was Bush breaking every liberal idol: the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, deference to the U.N., subservience to the "international community." It was an astonishing performance that left the world reeling and the Democrats seething. The pretender had not just seized the throne. He was acting like a king. Nay, an emperor.
On the domestic front, more shock. Democrats understand that the Bush tax cuts make structural changes that will long outlive him. Like the Reagan cuts, they will starve the government of revenue for years to come. Add to that the Patriot Act and its (perceived) assault on fundamental American civil liberties, and Bush the Usurper becomes more than just consequential. He becomes demonic.
The current complaint is that Bush is a deceiver, misleading the country into a war, after which there turned out to be no weapons of mass destruction. But it is hard to credit the deception charge when every intelligence agency on the planet thought Iraq had these weapons and, indeed, when the weapons there still remain unaccounted for. Moreover, this is a post-facto rationale. Sure, the aftermath of the Iraq war has made it easier to frontally attack Bush. But the loathing long predates it. It started in Florida and has been deepening ever since Bush seized the post-9/11 moment to change the direction of the country and make himself a President of note.
Which is why the Democratic candidates are scrambling desperately to out-Dean Dean. Their constituency is seized with a fever, and will nominate whichever candidate feeds it best. Political fevers are a dangerous thing, however. The Democrats last came down with one in 1972--and lost 49 states.
Bush has hardly betrayed his "class". As a member of a class used to expectant of achievement, he has succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation.
However, as a representative of "elitism", he is an utter failure. And this goes back quite away. Recall that, when he attended Yale, Bush did not socialize with the elitist snobs -- among the faculty or the student body. Indeed, he appears to have held the entire institution in some disdain.
But the telling point is when he went for his MBA at Harvard. The conformist position at Harvard was virulently anti-war and anti-military. The ROTC had been (or was in the process of being) kicked off campus. In this poisonous atmosphere, Bush ostentatiously wore his ANG flight jacket to classes -- sending a clear signal as to a.) his loyalties and b.) the despicable state in which he beheld the elitist left.
Subsequently, everybody who knows him says that the President has far more in common with the West Texas oil patch than with the Ivy League.
Which is just one more reason why the left hates him...
Bush will do the same thing.
It warrants applause. And I'm clapping...
Yes, Bush has and will try the same thing. That is the purpose of this article by the way. But the difference is that Bush has reason to feel wounded and victimized by a party of hypocrites and liars and doesn't have the media in his hip pocket (with the exception of the unwatchable and embarssing Fox News) like Clinton did.
You may have misunderstood my thrust in as much as I concur with you totally your analysis.
The class elites and their liberal mein as you opine were totally rejected by Dubya, which indeed causes them to despise the man today.
Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman, Gore, - not one has an ounce of crediblity.
Although I am not for this war in Iraq- I thank God it is at least run by a Republican and by a man who stives to be moral and decent.
I understood your thrust. I just expanded on it, because it illuminated a piece of the truth.
Historically, Bush's class has stood for noblesse oblige and achievement. The leftist elite despises that concept and, instead, claims the pinnacle for themselves, based on their (supposed) intellectual (and moral) superiority.
Their claims aren't based on any kind of achievement, but on arrogance alone.
And, as you say, they hate Bush. Because, in their world, he should be one of them. But he rejected them, siding with the common people, the businessmen and oil field workers in Midland, Texas. Thus proving his "ignorance" and earning the everlasting animus of the leftist Ivy League elite.
I believe we both know these people and we share a common opinion of them.
If you can't look at yourselves a little more objectively, you're probably not doing yourselves or any cause much good. Blind zealotry is never to be envied.
For what it's worth, I despise Bill Clinton with every fiber of my being. But I've seen suggestions that he was responsible for everything from halitosis to the Lindbergh kidnapping. That kind of vitriol just makes the accuser look ridiculous. Kind of like a lot of Bush-haters look right now.
Bill Clinton was a bad man, and a bad president. The Right rejected him because he was so hostile to their values. The Left thinks the same of Bush: he is evil, unscrupulous, treacherous, and vile. Make no mistake, they think just as poorly of him as we did of Slick. And no amount of "We're right and you're wrong" is going to change their minds, any more than that argument changed ours during the Dark Years when the Arkansas Fellow Traveler sullied the White House.
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