Friends of ours, a gentle-spoken and kindly atheist couple, ride a truck with an "Impeach Bush" bumper sticker on it. I haven't broken it to them that on the wall of my office is a framed invitation to the 2001 Inaugural.
I have long wondered about the animosity that the younger Bush has attracted, when he hardly governed as a conservative, and when, by all accounts, he is personally a likable enough fellow. I mean the absurd accusations of complicity in the deaths of 3000 Americans in New York, or the nonsense that he was another Hitler, or that he lied in order to involve the nation in a war, and so forth. So I'd like to perform a couple of thought experiments.
Put a (D) after Bush's name, and remove from him all the most obvious influences of his Christianity. That is, make him a man who hardly darkens a church door, is pro-abortion, would never think of faith-based initiatives, and is uncomfortable praying. No National Hymn played for the second inaugural. Keep everything else exactly the same.
What would people say about him? What would Democrats say? What would Republicans say?
I can think of one thing people would say. "If you knew that the man in the cell was in on a plot to kill your child," or, since it's the politically correct military we're talking about now, that new creature called "your sunnerdotter," "what would you do to get the information out of him? I know what I'd do. I'd hold a knife to his throat. I'd beat him within an inch of his life!" I'm not justifying anything here, folks. I am wondering what people would say. By the way, if I thought that somebody was threatening my kids or my wife — well, I better not dwell on it, because it would keep me up all night.
You can probably think of many other things. But I'm betting that much of the antagonism that Bush met with has to do with his profession of faith. Clinton, a cad and a scoundrel, could sing in the choir because everybody knew he was a cad and a scoundrel, and could guess (I am not sure how accurately) that he was just putting on. (I believe there's a real soul somewhere inside of ol' Jethro, but I don't think that that was a side of him that his supporters cared about.) Suppose George W. Bush was Bob Packwood, or Arlen Specter, thoroughly secular, and yet suppose that in eight years he did pretty much the same things (like tabbing Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court). Suppose he were someone who might say, "Yes, they get frightened, and so they cling to their guns and their religion." Suppose he bowed and scraped to "science" every other day. And yet suppose, based on the information he had on hand, that he decided to invade Iraq, and all the rest of it, just as President Clinton involved us (yes, to a much lesser degree) in Serbia (and for no clear reason related to national security). What would the "religulous" Bill Maher say about him? Or the erstwhile sportscaster with the dyspeptic grimace, Keith Olbermann?
There’s an actual historical example for this question: LBJ. He had many more liberal accomplishments than W ever thought about, yet lost a primary in 1968 due to Vietnam. Those protesters shouting “hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” weren’t conservatives.
Also, there is plenty of criticism of Obama’s failures to get out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay on lefty blogs if you’ll just look. Atrios is the best place to start, but any of his links will be useful.
Finally, I’m sure the point of this is to remind those who agree with you how mean and nasty and hypocritical everyone who disagrees with you is, so that no one has to bother with examining the evidence.
I don’t know – a lot of Britons hate Tony Blair with a deep passion, much deeper (it seems from a distance) than that of most American Bush-haters. Of course, Blair also professed religious faith, but he was no social conservative.
Karen, why does even the consideration of the role that religious faith may have in some of the visceral expressions of dislike for W raise such vehemence in you?
A better comparison might be between W and Jimmy Carter. They professed a faith that was quite similar outwardly and yet seem to have come to vastly different political solutions. If my memory serves, while Mr. Carter’s faith was ridiculed at times, since his profession of faith did not interfer with his approach to government, he was given a pass by people who are sympatico with the current detractors of W.
W on the other hand was not given a pass because of the combination of political opposition and his professed faith don’t you think?
A larger question and concern to me is that anyone can call themselves Christian and no one really knows what it means. We seem to have lost the ability to define ourselves properly so that when someone claims to be a Christian ala Jim Jones and David Koresh that are demonstrably not Christian, there is no credible opposition to their assumption of the name.
A more recent vilification of the name of Christ is the extreme liberals who repeatedly claim that Timothy McVeigh was Christian and acted out of his self-identity as a Christian. That is both a factual misrepresentation (he did not act out of any self-proclaimed Christian motive) and a gross theological mis-representation as there is nothing in Christian tradition or doctrine that allows for or encourages such an act.
Obama’s public pronoucements on his faith clearly put him well outside anything that could credibly be called Christian. His faith is a political and ideological sycretism with a patina of Christian phrases. His wholesale support of abortion merely is one confirmation of his lack.
Not everyone who claims Christianity is even nominally Christian. Not everything preached in Jesus name is authentic. So people are naturally skeptical.
The single best profession of genuine Christianity remains the original Nicean Creed. It was a triumph of both intellect and faith that remains unsurpassed.
Even the Creed, however, does not address our need to discern whether someone professing it actually means it.
Karen, ad hominem as ever.
And there were plenty of conservatives who criticized President Bush. They did so all the time. I am asking instead about the bizarro-world hatred, calling him “Hitler,” saying that he was an inside player in 9/11, and so forth. George W. Bush was a political moderate — that is just a plain fact, and conservatives had to get used to it. So why the hatred?
And by the way, I did also ask, “What would Republicans say?”
Bush’s professed faith was a huge bonus to him politically and bought him a lot of cheap votes, even though he apparently doesn’t even go to church. His low approval ratings had nothing to do with his professed faith and everything to do with his mismanagement of Iraq and his handling of the economy. Obama, on the other hand, is compared to Hitler by idiots like Rush Limbaugh who is actually given the time of day by some mainstream conservatives.
Matt,
I am not talking about low approval numbers, but about the hatred — which LONG preceded the troubles in Iraq, and certainly preceded the bust of the housing market late in his second term.
Rush Limbaugh has never compared President Obama to Hitler. He does say that Obama is a socialist.
Matt,
Please provide proof that Bush “apparently doesn’t even go to church”. And I frankly have never heard that Limbaugh has seriously compared Obama to Hitler, so I’d like to see proof of that, too.
Limbaugh claimed Obama rules by dictate “like Adolf Hitler.” You can hear him comparing Obama to Hitler at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8w-Ll0JXSU . Unfortunately Limbaugh influences other equally ignorant people who march around with Obama placards with swastikas and Hitler mustaches.
Chelie, google it.
As for visceral hatred, Bush was given a fairly generous pass on the genuinely questionable legitimacy of his presidency after 2000. However, the loons are still out in force claiming Obama was born outside the US. Some of these loons are congressmen!
It’s pretty clear that yours is a highly partisan position, Mr. Esolen. To play the Christian victim card is odd after Bush benefitted so clearly by gaining the support of the religious right.
the genuinely questionable legitimacy of his presidency after 2000
The bloody Florida ballots were examined every which way by canvassing boards, trial judges, and news outlets. There was simply no set of consistent tabulation rules that would have awarded Florida’s electoral votes to Albert Gore. Get over it.
The New York Times, no friend of GWB, led a consortium of eight news groups that purchased the rights to recount all the disputed Florida ballots. Here is the link to its own front-page news story of the results, and a quote from the beginning of the article (Nov. 12, 2001):
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEEDB1338F931A25752C1A9679C8B63
“A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.”
“Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.”
“Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.”
After some intervening material on the poor ballot design in certain counties (all heavily Democratic, with the ballots designed by Democrats), etc., it continues:
“Thus the most thorough examination of Florida’s uncounted ballots provides ammunition for both sides in what remains the most disputed and mystifying presidential election in modern times. It illuminates in detail the weaknesses of Florida’s system that prevented many from voting as they intended to. But it also provides support for the result that county election officials and the courts ultimately arrived at — a Bush victory by the tiniest of margins.”
The story notes a hypothetical scenario under which Gore “might” have won,if a massive manual recount of all potentially disputed ballots in the entire state had been performed, rather than the four counties in which the Gore actually filed a challenge. However, the Times admits in the article that a) this scenario depends on all the ballots being counted in exactly the way the news consortium counted them (which was maximally favorable to Gore, e.g. by including “dimpled” chads that could be seen by only one single tabulator and no others, etc.), and b) that this scenario would have been impractical.
The Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount
has a convenient tabular summary and correctly notes that “the only way that Gore would have won was by using counting methods that were never requested by any party.”
Actually, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/111207a.html
The point is that a full hand count was never held, even though the difference in votes between the two men was well within the voting machines’ margin of error. Now tell me that isn’t a more valid issue to be upset about than the false, meat-headed, and often disproven claim that Obama was not born in the US.
I think many people, Republican and Democrat, feel that Bush Junior was an inadequate president. I don’t see the visceral hatred toward him that I see toward Obama, and I think Bush’s professed Christianity was an asset to him and bought him a free ride with a lot of people.
Matt, the preposterousness of your bringing up Limbaugh’s comparing Obama to Hitler as some sign of the right’s greater negative partisanship is laughable.
Does the term “Bushitler” ring a bell? Your guys have been calling conservatives Fascists and Nazis for decades now. Scratch that. Anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy was fair game for the epithet. Reagan of course, both Bushes, Gulianni. The difference between true conservative and moderate to liberal Republicans never mattered, any more than the actual facts of what fascism entailed in terms of political philosophy and ideas of governmental power.
But since your side is on the side of the angels in your view, any criticism made against you is unjust and viscious while any criticism you make against us is simply the truth, and therefore no “attack” at all.
OK, I bit, I checked out the Obama-Nazi clip.
So — you have somebody on the Left calling conservatives Nazis. That’s what we’ve been hearing for years. We’re right wing theocrats, fascists, Nazis, and so on. So Limbaugh was fed up with the garbage. He is peeved by the accusation, made by one Mr. Ravinsky. He specifically says, over and over, that he is NOT saying that this government is genocidal. In other words, he is NOT accusing the Obama government of what the Left accused the Bush government of being, over and over — and what the secular idiots accuse the Catholic church of being, over and over. He says that several times. Then he makes the point — it is made ironically, by casting the accusation back in the accuser’s teeth — that the Obama health care plan, which Limbaugh claims is a socialist plan, is very similar to the health care plan which the German National Socialists dreamed up.
Get it? Get it? His point is NOT that Obama is Hitler. It is that Obama is a socialist, and that the Left should stop throwing the word “Nazi” at conservatives!
So you MAKE THE POINT I HAVE TRIED TO MAKE ABOVE.
It does weary me to have to say this so often — but — I am a conservative in academe. I know damned well what Leftist academics across town at Brown would say about me if I were to say, on their campus, “I believe that homosexual acts are unnatural, and that boys deserve an uncomplicated expectation of being heterosexual.” Nazi! Fascist! Hate monger! Gosh, you think I haven’t been paying any attention to the Left, when I’ve been in academe all my adult life?
AND another thing. If I say, “Joe hates me for being a Christian,” how is it a refutation to say, “Mary likes you for being a Christian”? I am asking what motivated the left’s hatred for so un-partisan and politically moderate a man. And that hatred began with day one. The “American people” didn’t hate Bush (though they were really tired of him by 2006). It was the Left that hated him. I’m asking why. I am genuinely puzzled by it, especially from people on whose lips the word “tolerant” is always to be found.
No, Tony, I don’t get it. Limbaugh frequently makes scurrilous statements and then tries to weasel out of them. In this case he was just saying that Obama, like Hitler, rules by dictate. Apart from demonstrating his faulty understanding of how legislation is passed and of the checks and balances built into our constitution, he’s obviously trying to convince his audience that Obama is like Hitler. How subtle is his comparison of the Obama health care logo to the Nazi swastika? Not very, is it? It’s quite clear what he’s trying to say. And how about his equally dumb comment, “Obama is no more in the center than Adolf Hitler was in the center, or Mao Zedong was in the center.” C’mon! What impression do you think the idiot wants to convey?
And Limbaugh is hardly the only one. You must have seen the pictures of people holding placards of Obama with a swastika in the background, or Obama with a Hitler mustache, or, in some cases, Obama dressed as a witch doctor in African garb. Why no condemnation from you here? If you’re offended by partisan comparisons of presidents to Hitler, why are you only concerned about comparisons of Bush to Hitler? It appears you have sacrificed principle to partisanship. And the suggestion that Bush is some sort of Christian martyr is also off-base. I know people who once formed his Christian base and felt betrayed by his lack of commitment to principles they once believed he upheld. He lost part of his base because he didn’t seem Christian enough to them.
The remarks about academe are a red herring. You’re merely showing yourself guilty of the same prejudices you impute to “the Left.”
Tony, what Charles Krauthammer identified as “Bush derangement syndrome” does seem to be best explained by the hatred of this world’s ruler for our once and future King. I remember Whoopi Goldberg getting apoplectic over the notion that Bush would presume to govern “as a Christian.” And she was relatively mainstream.
It’s not necessary to set up Bush as a Christian martyr in order to comprehend how the “ruler of this world” might be threatened and incensed that the most powerful elected leader of the world happened to be a genuine Christian. Certainly the “god of this world [who] has blinded the minds of unbelievers” is not powerless to effect great mischief through disseminating his lies. We have the promise that all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, and if the world has hated Jesus it will hate his servants also.
Though the nations rage against the Lord he will someday laugh them to scorn.
While I generally agree with Professor Esolen, I must say that I see the hatred of G.W. Bush to be much the same as the hatred of Obama. For a long time now, we’ve had this over-the-top demonizing of the president by the fringes of the the party and it has recently spread to widen its reach. Obama is compared to Lenin, Mao and Stalin all the time. Bush was compared to Hitler. For the entirety of his two terms, Clinton’s enemies insisted on trying to find some grounds to justify his impeachment and removal from office, constantly distracting the nation from important issues. I’m convinced that when legitimate grounds were finally found — Clinton’s perjury — Americans opposed his removal in large party because they viewed the Republicans as having engaged in a six-year-long witch hunt and didn’t want to reward them even though Clinton had in fact committed an impeachable offense. Before that, Reagan was portrayed as Hitler.
I’m a lifelong Republican, a social and fiscal conservative, and an economic and regulatory centrists, but I won’t pretend this is a one-sided hatred aimed at Bush simply because he professes Christ. This demonizing is two-sided and reflects a deeply divided nation composed of people who are polarized into two competing and incompatible world views. I don’t see any reason to believe this will get markedly better anytime soon.
Finally, as to Bush, he was probably the most socially conservative president we’ve had since social issues have become a predominant fixture of our politics. For that I’m grateful. He was anything but conservative otherwise, especially on fiscal matters, where he simultaneously increased domestic discretionary spending at the fastest rate of any president since LBJ while cutting tax rates to their lowest levels in more than a decade. The results, record deficits even before he became the first president in history to spend more than $1 trillion more in a year than the government took in in revenue in his last year in office. He, not Obama, is the one who agreed to bail out the banks while allowing them to continue to award huge bonuses to the very people who had brought them and us to the very brink of collapse. He explicitly encouraged Americans to consume after 9/11 even though everyone knew that such consumption could only take place by violating a core conservative value of thrift and through record consumer debt. He actually celebrated the increased rate of home ownership even though many objective observers were predicting a train wreck because of people buying homes which they could not possibly afford with debt arrangements that were both innovative and insane. He was, in short, the worst president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter and the worst Republican president since Warren Harding. His incompetence is why we now have Obama in the White House and why we had a large Democratic majority in Congress which was able to shove Obama/Pelosicare down the throats of an unwilling populace. I voted for him twice and held my nose while doing it both times, most especially in 2004, by which time my concerns in 2000 were proven far too optimistic. If Republicans ever hope to have a sustained majority, they will have to repudiate much of President George W. Bush’s legacy.
I am in total agreement with Greg Laughlin.
It is of the nature of ideology to demonize one’s opponents. Leftism, being inherently ideological (there does exist what might be called a non-ideological Left, but the group is small and not particularly vocal), has had this demonization tendency since (at least) the 60s, when Marcuse said that tolerance need not be extended to those on the Right. As James Kalb has argued in his masterful book ‘The Tyranny of Liberalism’ (which despite its somewhat inflammatory title is quite measured and nonhysterical), Leftism sees any opposition to its policies as moral failures. As a result the Left seems far less able to make the distinction between a man and his sociopolitical views than the Right does, generally speaking.
While there are no doubt conservatives who hate Obama as a man, one is far more apt to find Rightists who use the word “hate” in regard to his policies as opposed to his person. With the Left, on the other hand, the hatred of conservative views often bleeds over into hatred of the person espousing them. After all, it was not conservatives who came up with a series of books titled “Why I Hate…”
~~The remarks about academe are a red herring. You’re merely showing yourself guilty of the same prejudices you impute to “the Left.”~~
B.S. As a musician I’ve seen exactly the same thing in the music scene. Anyone with half a brain and one eye can see this; ever read Rolling Stone or watch MTV?
Btw, while Obama definitely has socialist, even Marxist, leanings he’s far too comfy with the corporations to be a full-on socialist, economically speaking. I have little doubt that he’s a cultural Marxist, however.
Matt – no, I will not “google it”. You are making the claim, so prove it.
Mr. Laughlin writes:
Finally, as to Bush, he was probably the most socially conservative president we’ve had since social issues have become a predominant fixture of our politics. For that I’m grateful.
Here it comes. “But…..”
He was anything but conservative otherwise, especially on fiscal matters, where he simultaneously increased domestic discretionary spending at the fastest rate of any president since LBJ while cutting tax rates to their lowest levels in more than a decade. The results, record deficits even before he became the first president in history to spend more than $1 trillion more in a year than the government took in in revenue in his last year in office.
Yes, and let’s not forget that there was a WAR on for almost all of Bush’s eight years in office. Remember? It was in all the newspapers. And wars cost money.
He, not Obama, is the one who agreed to bail out the banks while allowing them to continue to award huge bonuses to the very people who had brought them and us to the very brink of collapse.
Actually, that should read “he AND Obama.” The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 — the “bailout” bill — was signed into law by Bush after being passed by the House and Senate. Senator Obama voted for the bill. If we’re really serious about taking a more realistic view of American politics, perhaps we could start by writing about national politics without isolating the Presidency and pretending it is the source of all of our country’s ills and boons. To do so doesn’t just falsify the historical record, it also amounts to mythmaking that reframes the presidency as a kind of Chinese Emperorship with a Mandate of Heaven.
He explicitly encouraged Americans to consume after 9/11 even though everyone knew that such consumption could only take place by violating a core conservative value of thrift and through record consumer debt.
Malarky. He encouraged people to respond to the 9/11 attacks — remember? — by not panicking and going about their lives as normally as possible. A wise choice, in my opinion.
He actually celebrated the increased rate of home ownership even though many objective observers were predicting a train wreck because of people buying homes which they could not possibly afford with debt arrangements that were both innovative and insane.
This is a transparent misprepresentation on your part. Bush may very well have “celebrated the increased rate of home ownership,” but he wasn’t celebrating the financial irresponsibility of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. As far back as 2003 we was pushing for the creation of a new agency that would have taken Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac out of congressional oversight. Unfortunately for us, the bill was not able to pass the Senate.
He was, in short, the worst president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter and the worst Republican president since Warren Harding.
Nah, I’d argue that Hoover, Nixon, Ford and George H.W. Bush were worse Republican presidents. Are you seriously suggesting that “wage and price controls” Nixon and “W.I.N.” Gerald Ford were better presidents?
His incompetence is why we now have Obama in the White House and why we had a large Democratic majority in Congress which was able to shove Obama/Pelosicare down the throats of an unwilling populace.
You’re back to blaming Bush for everything, again. Why not blame him for Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 while your at it.
Benighted Savage,
Thanks for that. HOme ownership has been long held up as part of the American dream, the difference was that laws such as the CRA, long championed by the democrats, made paying for those homes somewhat optional. I believe the Bush administration tried some 17 times to rein in FM/FM, but could not get it past the congress. A particularly useful marker is the amount
of spending that occurred after the 2006 congressional election.
Based on some of the interviews I’ve seen with Bush over the last week or so, he sees where he strayed too far from a limited government model. What you also see is someone who believes very strongly, right or wrong, in a need for the government to step in at times to help whether for the elderly, or for immigrants etc. I sense a Christian understanding of charity combined with a certain
patrician understanding of responsibility for the less fortunate as the drivers for much of his compassionate conservative policy. I don’t think those policies work in practice often but I can understand why he would see the need to try.
Benighted Savage,
I’ll not address every one of your points. I assume you reference the war (actually two wars) as a defense for his deficits. That won’t wash with me because the wars, by themselves, were not the cause of the deficits. Unlike such war time presidents as Lincoln and FDR, Bush actually cut taxes during war time. That was part of the problem. The second was Bush’s effort to catch up with LBJ in discretionary domestic spending. Why, when we are at war and we are cutting taxes, would Bush actually work to pass legislation and enact budgets that increased spending not related to national defense? I’m not the only conservative to be flummoxed by Bush in this regard. See a couple of examples from the Cato Institute: On Spending, Bush is no Reagan and George W. Bush: Biggest Spender Since LBJ.
I won’t argue with you on the relative demerits of G.W. Bush compared to Hoover and Nixon (though I stand by my statement that he’s the worst Republican since Harding). Ford did a good job given the circumstances and we would have been well served had he won election in 1976. President G.H.W. Bush was a very competent president. Bush Sr. may have been a bad politician, but he did a fine job running the government for his four years in office. He should have been a two-term president. It’s a pity conservatives abandoned him and so helped elect Clinton instead. I’m still shaking my head over that one 18 years on.
I always thought the hatred of GW Bush had much to do with his accent. Many Americans have a knee-jerk reaction against a strong Southern accent. You’all know what I mean?
Are we saying here that it is a constant feature of political man, to hate one’s political opponents with a hatred that is intense, personal, and irrational? Is that always so? I don’t think that the elections of 1976, 1980, and 1988 featured that degree of animosity. I’d be interested in finding out what the “hatred” was like in the close election of 1916 (Hughes-Wilson), or the popular minority / electoral majority election of 1888 (Harrison-Cleveland, round one).
I’m wondering about this. The things that were said about Lincoln — that makes “sense” to me, because of what the country was undergoing. I don’t agree with them, but I can see why such things were said. I can understand the populist Bryan inveighing against the industrial interests. I don’t think that Bryan’s economics were right, but I can understand the passion.
You may say that the Right are as good at hating as the Left. That may be, but I don’t see it. I know that if I told my friend that I voted for Bush twice, that would put a chill on our friendship. Why is that?
The difference, I suppose, is between those people, of whatever political persuasion, who have turned Politics into a god, and those people who haven’t. If you haven’t, then to hate somebody who disagrees with your politics doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s like hating somebody who disagrees with your teaching methods, or something like that. I don’t hate President Obama, and didn’t hate Bill Clinton. It may be that I feel the hatred directed my way more keenly because of what I do for a living. Or it may be that people on the political Left, who tend to me more secular in their outlook, are also more prone to taking politics too seriously, and making a god out of it. Plenty of leftists and secularists are invited to speak at my campus, without any ruckus. But I know there’s not a chance in hell that I’d be invited to speak, say, at Brown University. I would be called a promoter of hate — for my politics.
I’ll not respond again to Tony, with whom I agree about why people come to hate their political opponents but with whom I disagree as to elements on the Left hating Bush any more than elements on the Right hate Obama. Both are equally appalling and shameful in my view.
I just have to respond to one more point made by Benighted Savage, however, who heard President Bush to merely be calling us to “not panick[] and [to go] about [our] lives as normally as possible.” I ask you to compare FDR’s fireside chat of December 9, 1941, to some of George W. Bush’s remarks.
First, FDR:
Now, GWB, first on September 27, 2001, in remarks delivered at O’Hare Airport in Chicago:
And then, a few years later, with the nation now at war in Iraq as well, listen to his remarks here.
How’s that for leadership? The nation is attacked and we are now at war and he’s calling for folks to go to Disney World. Later, we are at war in Iraq, a war that is not going well and that’s losing support at home, and he’s calling on Americans to shop. I recall well what he said because I recall my being appalled and, yes, ashamed that an American president could be so shallow and that his opinion of his fellow Americans could be so low that he chose to ask us to continue to entertain ourselves rather than to sacrifice for our nation. History called on him and on us. He sent the military to war, as he should have. He called on the rest of us to fly down to Disney World and to go shopping and we heeded his call.
“Yes, and let’s not forget that there was a WAR on for almost all of Bush’s eight years in office. Remember? It was in all the newspapers. And wars cost money.”
Yes, a war of his making.
You’re back to blaming Bush for everything, again. Why not blame him for Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 while your at it.
I’ve actually heard/read conservatives lately claim that Bush prevented us from being attacked during his presidency. Seriously. If something on the scale of the 9/11 attacks were to occur on Barack Obama’s watch, can you imagine the reaction from the right? Would they rally ’round him in support? That idea is laughable; Obama is blamed for failed and even for thwarted attacks …
Limbaugh frequently makes scurrilous statements and then tries to weasel out of them. In this case he was just saying that Obama, like Hitler, rules by dictate.
Bingo, that’s RL’s usual modus. More to the point, while you can find extreme language about Bush on the left, I honestly can’t think of anyone on the left who is equivalent to Limbaugh or Beck, to whom elected officials must come crawling. Limbaugh’s basically an entertainer, but he wields a lot of influence.
Finally, if anyone thinks there is not personal hatred toward Barack Obama among the Tea Party crowd, I invite you to check out the rhetoric on Free Republic and other such sites sometime, if you can stomach it. The language is truly vile, and it’s directed not just at our president but at his wife and daughters. (For example, it’s not unusual to hear them described as “ghetto” trash – but no, it’s not personal … )
“Limbaugh frequently makes scurrilous statements and then tries to weasel out of them.”
and
“Bingo, that’s RL’s usual modus”
Not so. Limbaugh is a satirist who uses a combination of bombast and subtlety. Liberals tend to overreact to the former which causes them to often miss the latter.
I hear ideological assumptions and anger on *both* sides. Can we not listen to both sides and have conversations other than with those who agree with us? …Conversations other than opposing monologues meant to communicate to third parties? Judging by the responses here, it is hard to believe listening is occurring. Touchstone has a bit of a reputation. It is a place where Protestant evangelicals are comfortable to talk right-wing US politics. Kind of like the Stand Firm site. I have a great deal of respect and love for Orthodox clergy associated with this site (as well as those still mired in the destruction of Anglicanism) but that hasn’t stopped me from noting an insidious partisanship of US politics that will creep into Antiochian Archdiocese politics, completely apart from the MP debacle. Given a dysfunctional organization, the parts will be dysfunctional. I had hoped this all would be left behind me in the dysfunction of Anglicanism. Alas, that is not to be. In fact it sounds like the same angry “us” on Stand Firm’s site. “We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Pogo
“Yes, and let’s not forget that there was a WAR on for almost all of Bush’s eight years in office. Remember? It was in all the newspapers. And wars cost money.”
Yes, a war of his making.
Bush did not make anyone fly airplanes into WTC 1 and 2 or the Pentagon. Bush did not make Congress authorize (and fund year after year) OEF-Afghanistan and other “fronts” in the War on Terror. Bush did not make our international allies support us in the WOT.
If something on the scale of the 9/11 attacks were to occur on Barack Obama’s watch, can you imagine the reaction from the right? Would they rally ’round him in support? That idea is laughable; Obama is blamed for failed and even for thwarted attacks …
I imagine that Republicans would in general support President Obama is he proposed a vigorous military/diplomatic response to such an attack. Whether President Obama would respond in such a way is an open question; if he were to kow-tow in the direction of the attackers, or just waffle, I imagine that the response would be to put political pressure on him to better defend our country.
GL, here’s a link to the whole speech by GWB that was given on 27 September, 2001: Remarks to Airline Employees in Chicago, Illinois
The entire speech is worth reading, but here’s the relevant paragraph from you excised your quotation:
“When they [the terrorists] struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this Nation’s war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It’s to tell the traveling public: Get on board; do your business around the country; fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots; get down to Disney World in Florida; take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.
Need I belabor the obvious point that Bush, who is here specifically addressing the travelling public and the CEOs and employees of US airlines, not just his fellow Americans, is trying to shore up public confidence in not just themselves but in a bruised and battered airline industry that was still recovering from the 9-11 attacks which occurred just 16 days before this speech. Perhaps you expected him to tell people to cancel their travel plans and stay home (so they could listen for news of major US airlines going belly up, no doubt).
I can’t respond to your “Iraq speech” link since my PC cannot open the audio file. I don’t doubt that it proves your point as well as Bush’s 27 September 2001 speech; which is to say, not at all. You should be ashamed of your decontextualization and misrepresentation of Bush’s speech.
Benighted Savage,
We will have to agree to disagree. I am well aware of the context, just as I was when I first heard the president’s remarks in September 2001. I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting Bush’s speech and I think it stands in stark contrast to how past war time leaders rallied the citizenry at times of war. FDR and Winston Churchill did not tell their nations’ citizen to “enjoy life the way we want to enjoy it” after their nations were attacked. Instead, they called them to the privilege of sacrifice and to blood, toil, tears and sweat. I believed then and I believe now that calling families to take trips to Disney World less than three weeks after 9/11 was foolish and was missing the opportunity to call the nation to shared sacrifice in an all-out war on al qaeda. I’ve wondered many times whether bin Laden would have been dead and his organization totally defeated years ago had Bush called the nation to total war and shared sacrifice. You think otherwise and you have as much a right to your opinion as I have to mine.
With that, I’ll end my participation on this thread and leave it others to continue.
I imagine that Republicans would in general support President Obama is he proposed a vigorous military/diplomatic response to such an attack.
Well, I don’t. Whatever he does is demonized. Look at
this link.
It’s almost comical.
I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting Bush’s speech and I think it stands in stark contrast to how past war time leaders rallied the citizenry at times of war.
It’s obvious that you are just repeating a Leftist canard about Bush that was started in the press. Let’s also not forget that Bush expressed other sentiments in this speech, made many other speeches, and that as president he was more than just an Orator in Chief for eight years. He was a Commander in Chief for our country’s armed forces, and a much more effective one than I initially thought he would be.
FDR and Winston Churchill did not tell their nations’ citizen to “enjoy life the way we want to enjoy it” after their nations were attacked. Instead, they called them to the privilege of sacrifice and to blood, toil, tears and sweat.
FDR and Churchill in 1942 were the wartime leaders of countries that hadn’t yet emerged from the Great Depression and were still re-arming. Our ecomony in 2001 (and still today) was many times larger than what what we had back in 1942, as was our military. To have had unnecessarily called forth a “privilege” of a draft and of rationing — egad, resurrecting the Office of Price Administration! What a thought! — would have been the height of folly in 2001, as it would be today.
I’ve wondered many times whether bin Laden would have been dead and his organization totally defeated years ago had Bush called the nation to total war and shared sacrifice.
For Bush to have called for a “total war” version of the WOT after 9-11, along the lines of WWII, would have resulted in a Congress unwilling to fund or authorize his response to the terrorist attack; would have isolated us from any allies in the WOT, if not in fact turned them into our enemies; would have, if by some stetch of the imagination Bush had managed to get a “total war” off the ground, probably resulted in WWIII. To have pursued the course you wish for here would have gone beyond just folly.
Part of the reason for the hatred on both sides, I believe, is that the press is frequently flat out wrong and gets people riled up for the wrong reasons. Of course part of that is just plain old partisanship, but false information in the press easily misleads the public into hating. Take the story of Obama’s “$2 billion” a day trip to India, which had no factual basis:
http://www.huliq.com/10178/representative-michele-bachmann-and-200-million-day-story
Many so-called journalists and radio show hosts are nothing more than partisan hate mongers who deliberately mislead the public, and many breathlessly report rumors rather than fact. When we start seeing more responsible reporting, we’ll see a decline in the hatred.
Matt, you’re right. That story (about the $200 million/day Asia trip – $2 billion was supposedly the entire cost of the trip :)) was deliberately pushed by Fox and talk radio. The lack of fact checking goes beyond sloppy, cut-corners reporting; if a “story” fits the overall meme about Obama, facts be damned. It was almost funny watching Michele Bachmann trying to push that story on CNN, citing “media reports.” As if a state trip could cost more per day than the entire war in Afghanistan …
Benighted Savage,
Disagree with me all you want, but please refrain from characterizing my position as based on nothing more than “a Leftist canard”. I’m not the only conservative who has criticized Bush’s approach to waging war on the home front. See, for example, the following article from The American Conservative:
Living Room War: You fight. We consume.
This approach to the home front during war time is yet another example as to why President Bush was not a particularly conservative president.
Yes — $200 *M*illion a day, not billion. Thanks, Juli. Sorry, it was a typo.
Disagree with me all you want, but please refrain from characterizing my position as based on nothing more than “a Leftist canard”.
It’s a Leftist canard. It has its origin in Frank Pellegrini’s anti-Bush hit piece written in response to Bush’s 20 September 2001 Address to a Joint Session of Congress. Pellegrini’s 21 September 2001 essay can accessed here: The Bush Speech: How to Rally a Nation
As for Bacevich’s 2005 essay, he makes the same mistakes you do: he misrepresents Bush’s speeches and makes historical analogies that aren’t apt. He also seems to share your nostalgia for WWII and the Office of Price Administration.
In response to your rallying ’round the flag of conservatism: To what extent Bacevich — who claims dyed-in-the-wool Leftists Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams as major inspirations for his scholarly work and who recommended that conservatives vote for Obama in the 2008 election — is a conservative is to me an open question. In general, I find The American Conservative to be an embarrassment to American Conservatism.
Greg,
It is worth noting that one of the differences between our economy now and during WWII is that it is now driven by consumption of non-essentials rather than the production of essentials. I think this is horrible economic policy, but it is not something that could be changed quickly, and it does mean that non-essentials like trips to Disney World are actually critical to the economic (and therefore military) strength of our nation. This has been underscored many times as the increase in American’s savings and reduction of personal debt have slowed economic recovery and job creation. Again, not I think a great way to model an economy, but it makes the President’s remarks make sense.
I don’t think Brown is as bad as it was in the days of the ill-fated visits by Camille Paglia, John Stossel, and David Horowitz. Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Ramesh Ponnuru, and even Robert Spencer have all spoken there without incident. Huckabee, in fact, was quite a hit with the students.