Once upon a time I had a fantasy.
I had this fantasy that once George W. Bush was no longer in office (God help us all when he is gone), the irrational left and their media sycophants would leave him alone. I will admit I have a rich fantasy life because it is obvious my dream of a cessation of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) is never going to happen.
Not only are the practitioners of BDS not content to rest on their considerable laurels, they are now in the process of trying to ruin his legacy.
Are they also trying to ruin the rest of his life? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Is their hatred simply because GWB, in their prejudiced eyes, “stole” the election from Al Gore in 2000 or is it something deeper? Would they be doing the same thing if John McCain had somehow managed to get enough marauding conservatives to vote for him, thereby winning the election a few weeks ago?
Let’s not kid ourselves.
If John McCain had won, we would be seeing a modern day version of crucifixion as the same practitioners of BDS did everything they could to destroy Sarah Palin. Heaven knows they sure tried during the election.
What causes us to hate the political opposition? There is nothing wrong with disliking the opposition. I do it all the time. But when that dislike crosses the line to the point of hatred, who is the hater actually hurting?
There is a difference between honest opposition to someone and pathological hatred.
As a card-carrying Republican, I don’t mind admitting I had a good healthy dislike of Bill Clinton when he was in office. I wished him no harm, but wasn’t all that anxious to wish him well, either. The thing is, my dislike of Bill Clinton, primarily because he was a Democrat, never crossed the line. When he did something of which I approved, I was the first to admit it. I even admit to complaining about a thing or two George Bush has done. But I don’t ever remember my dislike of Bill Clinton crossing the line where I openly rooted for his downfall.
Let’s be honest here. Bill Clinton was his own worst enemy. He really did not need my help. We’re all our own worst enemies, given the opportunity just to be human. That’s why I don’t need to go around “hating” Barack Obama. That’s not in my job description.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Les Slater
S.J.,
I appreciate much of your sentiment and even agree with some of it, but... Bush great?
Les
2 - Doug Hunter
Bush is a symbol more than a man. He represents, fairly or unfairly, 9/11 and it's two war aftermath, Katrina, and now the mortgage crisis. The country is looking forward to turning the page and putting those things along with George Bush in the past. The media may not have liked him in the end but that's not what drove his unpopularity. Failing to curb government spending while cutting taxes, involving us in expensive and protracted wars, massive no bid contracts and handouts to megacorporations, sitting idly by while the mortgage crisis took down wall street alienated people on his own side... not the choice of words by a journalist who probably is ideologically opposed to him.
Interestingly, since Obama's win in the election I've noticed a distinct turn in the media showing the human side of Bush and not treating him as harshly.
I'm just happy our next president isn't a Kennedy, Clinton, or Bush.
3 - Arch Conservative
For the record it's not only deranged leftists that will be happy to see Bush go.
I will be more then happy to yell as he walks by....."don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!"
With time I have also come to aapreciate if not the chracter and motivations of Bill Clinton, the economic outcome of his self centered need to be loved by all. He was good for the economy in the 1990's not because he was some economic genius but because he was lucky enough to be in the oval office while the private sector was going through the .com boom and he was smart enough not to fuck it up with government meddling.
I can only judge Obama based on what we have seen from him so far and all of the evidence paints a picture of a man who will be closer than any other president in history to being a .......... it's that dreaded S word. If he proves me wrong and does not attempt to subsidize every deadbeat and illegal in this nation and/or (more likely and) try to solve every problem, social economic or otherwise through federal government intervention then maybe I will judge him less harshly.
Until that day he will always be empty suit arrogant good for nothing eight ball Barry to me.
4 - Jet
Kinda like the obsession that Arch has with Ted Kennedy. Depends on which side of the argument you're on as to whether you're ridiculous or "the voice of truth" doesn't it.
When everything is boiled down, the reason Bush II is reviled with one of the lowest approval rating of any president, is because when you boil away all the excuses for going into Iraq like an algebra equation, you come to the conclusion that he took us into Iraq to cover his father's ass for not taking out Saddam when he had the chance back in the 80s.
Rational Americans have come to realize that if we'd stayed in Afghanistan where our troops belonged in the first place rooting out Osama and destroying his billion-dollar poppy/heroin cash crops that still finance him to this day, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place and GW would be on Mr. Rushmore...
...but noooooooo
5 - Cindy D
I will admit I have a rich fantasy life...
I noticed.
6 - Raggedyman
The liberal media knows that turmoil sells. They are the ones who feed the fires of hatred while standing back behind their cameras acting like all they are doing is reporting the news which we now know is complete BS. What they report, is their OPINION of the news. We have come full circle back to the days of yellow journalism and it makes me sick to my stomach. I'm tuning out.
7 - Glenn Contrarian
"The liberal media feeds the fires of hatred"?
Like, "Sarah Palin doesn't know Africa's a continent/what newspapers or magazines she reads/the job description of a Vice President (three times in four months)/spent $150K of Republican money on clothes"?
Oh, WAIT a minute! ALL of that either came from the Republican party or from HER OWN MOUTH!
Ah, but I'm a DUMMY! The media REPORTED it, so it MUST be part of that VAST left-wing media conspiracy....
Tell you what, 'raggedyman', if you want to make me believe that the media's greatly biased against the right, then show me what they've reported that is NOT TRUE.
Back up your accusations with provable facts. Otherwise, go home.
8 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Like, "Sarah Palin doesn't know Africa's a continent/what newspapers or magazines she reads/the job description of a Vice President (three times in four months)/spent $150K of Republican money on clothes"?
Oh, WAIT a minute! ALL of that either came from the Republican party or from HER OWN MOUTH!"
Glenn, you should probably stop using absolutes in your comments. It turns them into factually incorrect quickly. The least I expect out of BC commenters is they're able to beat up, if nothing else, their own straw men. Politico broke the Palin clothing bill story. And the Africa/continent anecdote is so highly implausible that I can't believe the Fox News reporter would run with it.
"Back up your accusations with provable facts. Otherwise, go home."
You first. (Also, I am home.)
9 - Jet
Apparently Raggedyman has never listened to Rush Limbaugh...
10 - Jet
You mean all that stuff about Palin turning against McCain after the election wasn't true?
11 - Dave Nalle
More telling than the few legit stories about Palin gaffes are the scores of bogus and unsubstantiated accusations against her which the media flogged after sending hundreds of reporters to Alaska just to dig up dirt on her from any disgruntled waitress or ex boyfriend they could find.
That level of dirt digging isn't normal in these situations. They didn't send a flood of reporters the few miles from New York to Delaware to dig up dirt on Biden and they pointedly ignored negative stories about Obama until the blogosphere forced them to acknowledge their existence.
Dave
12 - Joanne Huspek
I remember when Nixon left office, in shame. Twenty years later, he turned out to be a "great statesman."
The man was the same, the times changed.
13 - Dave Nalle
Time just allowed us to see Nixon more completely. In reality he was both a great statesman and a reprehensible scumbag. The two turn out not to be mutually exclusive.
Dave
14 - Jet
Dave, I'm ashamed of you, you didn't quote Spock?
"There's an old Vulcan proverb that only Nixon could've gone to China."
In terms of Foreign relations, Nixons partnership with Henry Kissinger was probably the most powerful and effective of any administration in history.
15 - Jet
"The Right's Irrational Hatred of Bill Clinton: Let's Not Do the Same to GWB" History has a way of balancing things doesn't it?
16 - Baronius
Glenn, the story about Palin not knowing that Africa is a continent is pretty standard stuff. It was clear that some McCain people would blame Palin for the loss, and some Palin people would blame McCain. So we probably shouldn't count hearsay as fact, especially when the witness has an ulterior motive. I didn't realize that the story originally came out of Fox News - Glenn, do you usually trust Fox News?
The Couric interview was a mess, but if you watch that particular question, it tells an interesting story. Couric asked what Palin read. Palin clearly jumped past the question to its implication that frontier folk don't read newspapers and magazines like the rest of us. So Palin answered that she reads them all, that Alaskans get all the major publications.
The descriptions of the VP's duties? I didn't find them inappropriate. It's a daffy job. "Running the Senate" is as good a concise definition as I've heard.
As for the money spent on clothes, you and I both know that if Palin didn't dress up fancily, the press would have been all over her for being a Walmart-dressed redneck. I respect a governor who doesn't have a closet full of high-priced suits.
17 - Baronius
SJ, this is a great article. We can't fall into the pettiness that the other side has exhibited over the last two terms. It's going to be tough, though. The internet encourages temper-tantrum politics.
18 - El Bicho
You probably should have asked for God to help us all while Bush was in office.
"they are now in the process of trying to ruin his legacy."
Sounds like you have your own BDS (Bush Delusion Syndrome) because he has done a pretty good job contributing to it.
Sorry, but you couldn't get me past page 1, and I didn't read all of that
19 - El Bicho
"the Africa/continent anecdote is so highly implausible that I can't believe the Fox News reporter would run with it."
likely because it came from Martin Eisenstadt, who identifies himself as "one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate."
20 - Cindy D
Bush's legacy is that he is a criminal, megalomaniac, power-addicted, cowboy, who never grew up from the games he played as a child and desired to try them out on the planet.
How can the left possibly be ruining that?
21 - Tony
I'm not sure how its not obvious why people hate Bush.
He is personally responsible for thousands of deaths in war he LIED to get us into. Let me repeat; had he not lied, those people would be alive but now they are dead because of George W. Bush.
As a Republican you should hate Bush far more than the left. He took your party and turned it into a joke. All the republican ideals -- small government, less spending, free market policy -- all fell by the wayside as this guy spent like a drunken sailor (as McCain said), massively expanded government and government spending, and took care of Iraqis before his own people.
What kind of an America would spend billions on another country while American families are being booted into the streets?
This is not a partisan issue because this idiot isn't a Republican. He is simply the most atrocious President in history. A man who took the worst from the right and the worst from the left and create a government that violated the Constitution, pissed our money away, abandoned it's people, and resulted in thousands of soldiers -- like my friend who came home with his eyes shot out -- to return their families maimed or dead -- once again, based on his lies.
I am not trying to say Obama will be great, or the Democrats are the answer (considering they are the morons in Congress who stood by while the body gave up its Constitutional right to declare war) but the only people who at this point don't see what a disgrace this man was are Jesus freaks and neo-cons.
The silent majority, Wall street, everyone in the center; they all abandoned this guy and the party and they will stay gone until the Republicans remember that they are the party of business, not of religion, war, and zealotry. Where is Nelson Rockefeller when you need him? Oh that's right, rolling over in his grave.
22 - Jet
Now if you really want to see something revealing about this whole Africa continent thing, heres something about 5 years old... click here and watch the first three minutes of this...
and remember it's years before anyone even heard of Palin!
23 - Jet
If you watch the whole clip they throw it in his face with hilarius results throughout the whole show
24 - Tony
And for the record, if the Obama presidency is anything even comparable to the Bush presidency we as Americans have a Constitutional duty to do a hell of a lot more than we did the past eight years. It's time to stop letting history repeat itself.
25 - Baritone
Considering where most of you know I come from politically, that I heartily disagree with the entirety of SJ's article is a given.
I find it utterly amazing that both W and Laura Bush, Cheney and others are prancing about recounting supposed "high points" of the Bush years essentially by revising history to fit their agenda. They talk of the great successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, their work towards better national health care and their careful stewardship of our economy. They even have Laura talking about what a bang up job they did in the wake of Katrina! Gag!! Presumably there are people listening to all this crap smiling and nodding just as if what they are hearing is actually true.
Why do people hate George Bush? It's not irrational. He deserves it. He earned it. George Bush is a fool. I find it incredible that people like SJ, Baronius and Dave amongst others still believe that GW was even adequate, let alone "great."
I find it equally incredible that people have made up their minds so harshly against Obama who hasn't even taken the oath yet. In that, such opinions are far more "irrational" than those of the most vociferous Bush haters. At least with Bush, there is a track record strewn with bodies, ruined lives and dashed hopes in his wake. Obama has yet to sit his buff little ass in the Oval Office chair.
B