There’s a pleasingly dispassionate treatment on the WSJ op-ed page today of that modern phenomenon of passions gone wild, Bush hatred.
Specifically, he deals with the oddity of intellectuals who actually defend hatred — by that word — as a rational response. More broadly, he brushes over the fact of president hatred in general. A sample:
Hating the president is almost
as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among
them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ
hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention
only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for
our presidents.
But Bush hatred is different. It’s
not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept
away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas,
intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine
words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred,
however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in
their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically
proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the
president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene…
As I’ve written in the past, this business of the political opposition hating the current president really went over the line into irrational and destructive to our political life shortly after the 1992 election (as I recall, the "Don’t Blame Me — I Voted For Bush" bumper stickers showed up on late-model cars before Clinton was even sworn in), and then made a leap into greater intensity after the 2000. I pondered the first wave of this in late 1994:
There was a time when voters whose candidate lost would say let’s give the
President, as President, a chance. Now, the day after the election, they stick "Don’t blame me; I voted for Bush" on their bumpers. For his part, the
President, who ran as a centrist, immediately slaps the opposition with gays
in the military, and lifts abortion restrictions by executive fiat.The cult of confrontation goes beyond partisan politics, worsening race
relations and escalating the war between the sexes (Will the argument over
Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas ever end?).
But there’s no question that, rather than getting better, this phenomenon stepped up to a new level of intensity with the election of George W. Bush. I find myself wondering whether this is because of the progression of the disease — that those who lose elections (particularly painfully close ones) are just getting angrier and less rational from one administration to the next — or whether the increase in intensity actually had something to do with Bush himself. I incline toward the latter interpretation, possibly because I can’t bear to think of this phenomenon getting worse — or even continuing — under our next president. (That, in fact, is the one thing that I worry about the most if Mrs. Clinton is elected — the hatred of her opponents is likely to know no bounds. Other candidates seem less likely to arouse such passions — but then, I could not have predicted the response to Bush that we’ve seen since the beginning of his first term.)
But that doesn’t mean I understand it. And don’t tell me it’s about the war. I remember distinctly wondering aloud about this in 2001, shortly before 9/11. I asked one of my colleagues to help me understand the intensity of the visceral reaction that Bush’s opponents had toward him. And I’m sorry, but I don’t find any of that nonsense about "stealing the election" persuasive, either. That’s a symptom, a manifestation of the disease, not a rational cause. As bitter a disappointment as it might have been for Gore supporters, you have to hate Bush to believe that his election was illegitimate.
My own theory is that it’s cultural or demographic. I think the key is in the way he talks, in his bearing — the sort of smug, smirking faux-cowboy thing, like a political version of a John Wayne wannabe. Some people just can’t stand that, whereas I just sort of shrug it off.
Anyway, I appreciated the thoughtful, careful and respectful way (the tone is not properly reflected in the headline) that this writer approached the problem of intellectuals, of all people, embracing passionate hatred as a positive thing. His conclusion:
The conflict between more
conservative and more liberal or progressive interpretations of the
Constitution is as old as the document itself, and a venerable source
of the nation’s strength. It is wonderful for citizens to bring passion
to it. Recognizing the common heritage that provides the ground for so
many of the disagreements between right and left today will encourage
both sides, if not to cherish their opponents, at least to discipline
their passions and make them an ally of their reason.
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I don’t hate Bush. I simply believe he has been the worst President of my lifetime. He wasn’t qualified for the job and he has done nothing to overcome that belief in eight years. He lacks intellectual rigor. He is all about perception and not about reality. He is a petulant child of privilege who has either taken the easy way out or else expected to get his way without any question. He had no problems sinking into the depths of political dirty tricks.
The handling of the Iraq War sealed the deal… starting with the completly phony presentation he forced Colin Powell to make to the U.N. He’s great on the “strategery” but awful on execution.
The one thing he could have done that would have had a positive impact on my opinion of him would have been following through on his Social Security privatization plans. He folded up on that one with his tail between his legs.
I have to wonder about the label, “intellectuals,” which the writer has given extreme Bush-haters. Most of the worst vitriol I’ve seen has come from people with a decidedly non-intellectual bent. What’s more, is he saying that there are no Bush-supporting intellectuals? I know this not to be true, either.
I don’t think he means that all who hate Bush are intellectuals, or that all intellectuals hate Bush.
I think he’s just noting the fact that he’s run into a lot of intellectuals (particularly of the academic variety, in his case) who not only DO hate Bush, but are OK with that, who don’t think such extreme passions are a barrier to clear thinking. And he wishes that were not the case.
I think the current level of vitriol can be traced directly to the widening gap between rich and poor that began with Reagan’s war on regulation and labor rights and the fundamentalist wing of the GOP’s obsession with using government to subsidize the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. It escalated in the 1980s when the GOP political strategy under Lee Atwater began focusing on wedge issues and pitting races against each other in order to split the Dems and marginalize the left (ala Willie Horton and Welfare Queens). Andn then it escalated even further when because Dems decided that to regain power, they had to fight fire with fire in the 1990s and it’s been an arms race of hate ever since. Each side ratcheting up the volume every election cycle.
But it really got personal for me, and for a lot of us who were generally in the middle and preferred rational moderation, when the Rabid Right fundamentalists who took control through nefarious means and then started impugning our patriotism for questioning an illegal war and the tragic dismantling of the Bill of Rights.
So now, I don’t much care if the fundamentalist Right calls me a hater at this point. We’ve got to get these people out of government first before we can worry about mending fences.
I think the current level of vitriol can be traced directly to the widening gap between rich and poor that began with Reagan’s war on regulation and labor rights and the fundamentalist wing of the GOP’s obsession with using government to subsidize the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. It escalated in the 1980s when the GOP political strategy under Lee Atwater began focusing on wedge issues and pitting races against each other in order to split the Dems and marginalize the left (ala Willie Horton and Welfare Queens). Andn then it escalated even further when because Dems decided that to regain power, they had to fight fire with fire in the 1990s and it’s been an arms race of hate ever since. Each side ratcheting up the volume every election cycle.
But it really got personal for me, and for a lot of us who were generally in the middle and preferred rational moderation, when the Rabid Right fundamentalists who took control through nefarious means and then started impugning our patriotism for questioning an illegal war and the tragic dismantling of the Bill of Rights.
So now, I don’t much care if the fundamentalist Right calls me a hater at this point. We’ve got to get these people out of government first before we can worry about mending fences.
I think the current level of vitriol can be traced directly to the widening gap between rich and poor that began with Reagan’s war on regulation and labor rights and the fundamentalist wing of the GOP’s obsession with using government to subsidize the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. It escalated in the 1980s when the GOP political strategy under Lee Atwater began focusing on wedge issues and pitting races against each other in order to split the Dems and marginalize the left (ala Willie Horton and Welfare Queens). Andn then it escalated even further when because Dems decided that to regain power, they had to fight fire with fire in the 1990s and it’s been an arms race of hate ever since. Each side ratcheting up the volume every election cycle.
But it really got personal for me, and for a lot of us who were generally in the middle and preferred rational moderation, when the Rabid Right fundamentalists who took control through nefarious means and then started impugning our patriotism for questioning an illegal war and the tragic dismantling of the Bill of Rights.
So now, I don’t much care if the fundamentalist Right calls me a hater at this point. We’ve got to get these people out of government first before we can worry about mending fences.
Settle down there, Syd… You only have to post it once, then give me time to approve it…
And thank you for that demonstration of the phenomenon, right here on our blog…
I don’t know it your comments qualify you as an intellectual, but under the definitions employed in this post, they certainly don’t DISqualify you.
Now, does anyone who can see the problems with partisanship on BOTH sides of this divide care to share with us?
I would so much like to see a campaign this year where candidates on both sides engaged in positive discussions concerning their views and their plans for this country. I so much do not want to see attack ads that cherry pick one particular thing and then twist it to appear far worse than what actually happened. I am not concerned with who is sleeping with whom (not my bed; not my business) I care about abortion and gay rights, but with the terrible problems we have facing us now, they’re way down on my list, and certainly are not disqualifiers. I’m looking for someone who’s willing to say what needs to be done, and to be honest about how we’re going to pay for it. That’s probably the quickest way to lose the election, unfortunately, but if we don’t look at our national economy, international policy, and world climate honestly we will destroy ourselves.
Smugness, disregard of the spirit of our democracy, the polluting of McCain’s good name, a war that will criple us for decades, truning a blind eye to the domestic problems, and attempting to govern by minority…what’s not to like?
Sometimes your blog seems to swallow a comment, making one wonder whether it ever got there or not. That might have been Syd’s problem. I suspect Atwater, in his zeal to win at any cost, awoke dragons that will be hard to soothe. Meanwhile a ‘faux cowboy’ is a fake John Wayne.
my apologies for the multi-posting. The lack of a confirmation screen or message made me think it had been eaten by the machine.
We intellectuals hated Bush even before the fraud that was the 2000 election. He was and is clearly a glad-handing child of privilege who was vastly underqualified to be president, who was chosen to run because of name recognition, and had to rely on electioneering shenanigans in the state governed by his own brother to win (followed, when that didn’t quite work, by a questionable SCOTUS decision to be installed into office.) The media since then have coddled him; his supporters continue to decry reason by insisting that history will bear out his mistakes and lack of intellectual depth as signs of a great man.
Indeed, what’s not to hate?
Is there irrational hatred of Bush? Certainly. Is the column in yesterday’s journal an adequate discussion of same? Not by a mile. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages are one of the last places a knowledgeable person would look for dispassionate treatment of anything concerning Bush and his policies. My personal feeling is that GWB is a lifelong foul-up; the Presidency is perhaps the first major thing he’s undertaken where money and family influence can’t rescue him.
“you have to hate Bush to believe that his election was illegitimate.”
Brad, I don’t think one need to hate Bush to think his election was no legitimate (I didn’t vote for Gore by the way), and think the whole idea of putting the election to the Supreme Court might have been the issue on legitimacy, nor do I think that four of the nine Justices at that time hated Bush.
I digress as that is a side issue. This is a phenomenon worth discussing – and I concurring in toto on your fears about H.R. Clinton Presdiency only exacerbating this horrible problem even more. I don’t hate Bush, but am severely disappointed in his leadership, his failuer and inability to implement policies and sometimes the policies themselves.
However, I have come to realize something as one who loves politics and political debate quite a lot – anymore, in large part because of the vitrol or acerbicness in politics, more and more the “debate” revolves not as much around what would be the best solution or what would be the best way to implement that policy, but rather to assign blame for the initial problem – as is that satisfactions gets us anywhere closer to a workable answer. I realize that initially the point was “your party/president…whatever” screwed this up, hence why should we trust you to do it correctly now, HOWEVER that very small point seems to now have become the PURPOSE of many political discussing. Furthermore, reasoned debate and real political science which is, (or perhaps I should say was)is being study and thought about less and less and extermely low level conversation which actually are discussing political philosophy have taken its place. Both are important BUT to discuss one when you should be discussing the other and not even realizing it is not a good thing for the future of our governmental system. And this article you write here goes to some of the heart of this problem. People are forgetting that politics is about the art of compromise, I guess as we become greedier and greedier as a society nobody is satisfied with “half a loaf” anymore?
I will say some of the vitrol against Bush, even by those who try to take a mature view of politics, is because he is the first President I can remeber – who I really didn’t feel like was my President. He really has always struck me and consequently acted like the President of the Republican Party (maybe just my perception) and not the President of the United States – Reagan, H.W.Bush, Clinton, Carter and Ford never struck me that way – with Bush I have always felt, and he has tried to deliver, the feeling that if you don’t agree with he him, he is not your President. I hope and pray the next President is the President of the United States, and NOT the Democratic or Republican party. And I pray for George Bush too, he is my President, even though he may not feel that I am his constituent.
Silence, I didn’t vote for Gore either but, like you, I’m totally convinced that Al Gore won the 2000 election. The disenfranchised black voters or the butterfly ballots alone were enough to give the Florida vote to Gore. Not even Pat Buchanan thinks he got as many votes as he did in southern Florida. Aside from that the popular vote went to Gore. We really should get rid of the electoral college.
“I think the current level of vitriol can be traced directly to the widening gap between rich and poor that began with Reagan’s war on regulation and labor rights and the fundamentalist wing of the GOP’s obsession with using government to subsidize the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. ”
Sooner or later you guys have to get another routine. This line is extremely worn.