Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Bush Hatred is NOT Helpful
So Scott McClellan has published his book on “What Happened to make me angry.” The book has been welcomed by many who suffer from Bush hatred. But what does this book add to history or to the whole “coming together” that McClellen says he believes in and which he feels most betrayed by. But is it helpful!
Look, I have been one of the most ardent critics of the great “Clinton Hatred” that dominated too many people on the Right in the 1990s. The two diseases (I am sure that a DSM-IV probably already has an entry for “Chronic hatred of politicians divorced from reality.” In many ways Clinton Hatred and Bush Hatred are very similar diseases. They both were accused of being liars, of being tools of the far wings of their parties, of destroying the Constitution. Of course the Iraq War makes Bush even more reviled, including by many in his own party (although as we have found out in this primary season, apparently some of the things that Clinton did, like trying to invade Sadaam in 1998 and Welfare Reform in 1996 has made many on the Left hate the Clintons as well).
What is funny is that, outside of the Supreme Court, where both men added justices that were in tune with their basic understanding of the use of the Court, both men were probably as good as possible for the other side. Clinton did sign Welfare Reform. He did not totally destroy the military despite the so-called “Peace Dividend.” He was a man of the people and on a basic level, was likable, if not always honest. Although I still believe he should be arraigned on charges for the actual efforts to keep the U.S. and the U.N. from stopping the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, but that is politics.
George W. Bush, on the other hand basically spent like a Democrat, handed over education reform to Senator Teddy Kennedy, and has conducted war by humane limits (yes yes, I know, Gitmo et al, but on the battlefield too often our troops have been limited by rules of engagement that would never have been accepted in WWII). Oh, and he has now bought into the whole Global Warming hysteria (please please remember, that Clinton already signed Kyoto, Bush could not sign it, and it was Clinton who did not send it up to the Senate because of the Senate’s preemptive decision to give a sense-of-the-Senate that said, “No way!”).
But reality is rarely a part of hatred. And, ultimately, it is not helpful. In 1998, driven by hatred of Clinton, the Republicans tried to impeach him (I think this was Right because a lie before the court by the chief law enforcement officer of the country, even if it was about sex, is destructive of our legal system). The result was large losses in the midterm elections that year. People hate pure hatred, and as our U.S. President of The Navigators reminds me constantly, “Be what you are for, not what you are against.”
But the Democrats and the far Left learned the wrong lessons. After the loss in 2000 (remember, ever recount done by the media of Florida, all of which excluded military votes that arrived late, found that Bush had indeed won), the Left set their heels in hard and decided to hate Bush. They called him stupid (he is not, though I will give you that he is one of the worst public speakers among the famous since Jonathan Edwards, he of the squeaky high-pitched voice and near-sighted reading of his text). Instead of seeing compassionate conservatism (as expressed by Bush) as an intermediate form between Leftish desires and conservative ideas, they saw him as Hitler, as Constantine, as the devil (oh wait, that was just Hugo Chavez).
Dennis Prager, the conservative Jewish talk show host often makes a very good statement – the Right sees the Left and thinks they are misguided, the Left sees the Right and thinks they are evil. And when you think someone is evil (as yes, some on the Right thought of President Clinton), then hatred is the proper response. It has not helped that George Soros, a man whose interests are entirely his own, has funded some of the hardest Left movements in our history. The Left used to be a small minority that had little power, little money, and little access to getting their thoughts out. But now, with Soros, the traditional media, and the internet, the hatred of the Left has been allowed to burgeon.
One of the leading items that personified the evil of Bush was the Valarie Plame affair, an incident that garnered a lot of attention in D.C. and among the media, but of which I never heard anyone in Colorado ever mention. It was quite unfortunate that Plame was outed, thus limiting her future service with the CIA (she has done well since, but that does not change the fact that she lost her chosen profession). The leak however was not a Bush planned strategy but the action of non-partisan, non-Bush supporting Richard Armitage. Of course part of the problem was that the Bush administration bungled the whole fall out of the leak, which showed the number one problem with this administration – it is loyalty oriented and thus not competency oriented. Poor Scott McClellen got caught in the middle of that, and for that I do feel sorry. However his treatment of the event strangely does not align with the now accepted and legally verified facts. Please read Robert Novak’s excellent column on this topic (Novak was the one to whom the leak was made, so he should know).
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/RobertDNovak/2008/06/02/mcclellan_on_plame
And so, McClellen, while not I believe personally hating the President, has thrown his lot in with those who hate him, a point that the television personality Bill O’Reilly drilled in on June 2, 2008 in his interview with Scott.
Now let me make it clear, I don’t hold any animosity toward Scott. Seems like a nice guy who was promoted to his point of incompetence as Press Secretary (he has to go down as one of the worst in the history of the White House). Scott benefited from President Bush’s loyalty. Scott was upset because he believed that Bush had promised to set a new tone (seemingly he forgot that the new tone was the tone of 2001 and then the Left started calling Bush everything under the sun). I am completely unsatisfied with the tone in Washington as well. I would love for us to get back to the basic belief that we all, Left and Right, Republican and Democrats are seeking to do what is best for America and all Americans. If we can get back to that idea, then the new tone will exist. I think that is one of John McCain’s best attributes, that he truly believes in bi-partisanship and has made many friends through the years on the other side of the aisle. Yes, he usually attacks conservatives, but I can live with that if he is able to bring that the two sides to work together.
What about Senator Obama? Well, for all his rhetoric about a new America, he has the most liberal voting record in the Senate (even more than Senator Bernie Sanders, the Socialist from Vermont. He has never worked across party lines, and because he is funded, supported and I believe wholly owned by the Left, he will be hard pressed to do anything other than be a tool of the Left. While he personally does not strike me as one who holds animus against anyone, I don’t think he will bring the world that Scott McClellen and I both desire.
But regardless, let me say Right now – I will not hate a President Obama, and I will tolerate no hatred against him in my company. But in trade, I ask the Left to reject Bush hatred, to repudiate books like McClellen’s, and bury the hatred that has marked presidential policy since 1993 forever.
