Hate and the Hating Haters Who Love It
Why do we hate our President? What's wrong with us? Can't we see that this great man has risen to history's challenge, and, with moral clarity and firm purpose, delivered us from evil?
Dunno. Jon Chait at TNR says it like this:
The persistence of an absurdly heroic view of Bush is what makes his dullness so maddening. To be a liberal today is to feel as though you've been transported into some alternative universe in which a transparently mediocre man is revered as a moral and strategic giant. You ask yourself why Bush is considered a great, or even a likeable, man. You wonder what it is you have been missing.
Molly Ivins also has a few ideas:
So George Dubya becomes president having run as a "compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own conservative and zilch for compassion. His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich. Then came 9-11, and we all rallied. Country under attack, most horrible thing, what can we do? Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles. Shop, said the president. And more tax cuts for the rich.
E.J. Dionne, cited here a few days ago, notes:
The critical fact is that the roots of the anti-Bush feeling among Democrats were planted before the war. Democrats are still incensed that even though they strongly backed the president after 9/11, Bush turned around and used issues of national and homeland security (1) to club them in the 2002 elections, and (2) to push through his ideological program, especially more big tax cuts.
Let's see - the man lacks the temprament of open-mindedness and the qualities of personal achievement. He campaigned as a moderate, stole the election, then governed as the most radical ideologue in American history. He squandered the opportunity for leadership posed by 9/11 to pursue a narrow partisan agenda. And his policies have manifestly thrown the country into economic chaos, international disrepute, and an unnecessary and costly war and occupation. Gee, I don't know why we can't all just get over it.
8:13:38 AM 
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