Posted on 12/03/2003 3:40:02 AM PST by ejdrapes
Love him or loathe him, America is united by Bush SOME of Hollywood’s wealthiest luminaries gathered in Beverly Hills last night for an event informally billed as “Hate Bush”. It was the latest example of American liberals getting caught up in the politics of rage. After listening for years to the populist, right-wing insults hurled at Bill Clinton, the American Left has counter- attacked with extraordinary venom. President Bush entered the White House pledging to unite and not divide and, in one way, he has kept his word. More than 90 per cent of Republicans passionately support him, and nearly as many Democrats despise him. In Mr Bush, the American Left has found a hate figure who some commentators believe far surpasses Richard Nixon. The result is a political and cultural landscape dominated by enraged extremes, and a burgeoning anger industry. A slew of anti-Bush books, many now bestsellers, are piling up. Al Franken’s Lies (And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them) is an excoriating damnation of the American Right and the Bush Administration. There is also David Corn’s The Lies of George W. Bush; Bushwacked, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose; Dude, Where’s My Country?, by Michael Moore; and The Great Unravelling, by Paul Krugman. George Soros, the billionaire financier, recently gave $15 million (£8.6 million) to a liberal group because, he said, removing George W. Bush had become “the central focus of my life”. Howard Dean, the former Governor of Vermont, has transformed himself from an unknown candidate to the leading Democratic presidential contender largely by tapping into the Bush hatred that simmers within the party’s grassroots. There is still burning resentment over Mr Bush’s disputed 2000 election and an exasperation with his uncompromising foreign policy, his domestic obsession with tax cuts, even the way he walks. “I hate President George W. Bush,” Jonathan Chait wrote in a September cover story for the liberal political magazine New Republic. “I hate the way he walks: shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from the sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo.” Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist, wrote on Sunday that Mr Bush runs “such a partisan, ideological, non-healing Administration that many liberals just want to punch his lights out, which is what the Howard Dean phenomenon is all about”. Sally Baron, 71, from Wisconsin, and Gertrude Jones, 81, from Louisiana, both left bequests in their wills that money be sent to any organisation working for the removal of President Bush. In Chicago, Jay Schwartz, who runs a clothing shop, gave away 5,000 bumper stickers in less than a month. They declared Mr Bush a “punk-assed chump”. Time magazine’s cover last week pictured Mr Bush with a lipstick mark on his right cheek and a blackened left eye, under the heading, “Love Him! Hate Him!” After conducting a series of polls, Time concluded that the electorate is more bitterly and evenly divided than it was in the 2000 election, mainly because there is so little ambivalence about the way voters feel about Mr Bush. “Reagan and Clinton ushered in the modern age of the acrimoniously divided electorate,” Time said. “But George Bush has cleaved the nation into two tenaciously opposed camps even more than his predecessors.” Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How IT Distorts the Truth, said: “In terms of level of vitriol, left-wing rhetoric is every bit as strong now as it has been from the Right.” The Right is not taking all this lying down. The right-wing television and radio talk-show hosts, who came of age during the Newt Gingrich revolution on Capitol Hill and President Clinton’s libidinous use of the Oval Office, are shriller than ever. So, too, are their recently published books: Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, by Ann Coulter; Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics and the UN are Subverting America, by Laura Ingraham; and Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War against Christianity, by David Limbaugh. Although bitter partisanship is nothing new in Washington, or America, some veterans believe that it has reached a new and fevered pitch. Geoff Garin, a pollster, said: “It is as strong as anything I’ve experienced in 25 years of polling.” Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, said that in 44 years of campaign-watching he had not seen anything like the Bush- hatred gripping America. The dangers of vilifying a President are acute, however. Mr Gingrich’s rabid campaign against Mr Clinton alienated voters to such an extent that control of Capitol Hill was handed back to the President. Two vilified Presidents, Nixon and Clinton, won re-election by landslides. The mild-mannered Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr lost.
The Left in the US is getting its own back for years of right-wing vilification of Bill Clinton
What obsession? I truly wish there were such an obsession.
After 3 years of a "new tone", look where it's gotten Bush with Democrats. But the one positive about the "new tone" is that it shows Bush focussed on issues and Democrats as rabid dogs focussed on hate.
What? The DemocRATS have not controlled Capitol Hill since the 1994 congressional elections. Clinton got reelected in 1996 with the smallest plurality of any presidential candidate winning a second term since 1916! As usual the British press does not understand the differences between the American system of separation of powers and the British parlimentary system.
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