- Conservatives believe liberals resent Bush in part because he is a rough-hewn Texan. In fact, they hate him because they believe he is not a rough-hewn Texan but rather a pampered frat boy masquerading as one, with his pickup truck and blue jeans serving as the perfect props to disguise his plutocratic nature. The liberal view of Bush was captured by Washington Post (and former tnr) cartoonist Tom Toles, who once depicted Bush being informed by an adviser that he "didn't hit a triple. You were born on third base." A puzzled Bush replies, "I thought I was born at my beloved hardscrabble Crawford ranch," at which point his subordinate reminds him, "You bought that place a couple years ago for your presidential campaign."
Chait elaborates on his thesis in his online debate over the topic with Ramesh Ponnuru, "Bush Hatred" in his Sept. 22 post:
- You, like most conservatives, claim that liberals see Bush as a hapless rube from the sticks. My experience is that liberals see Bush as a phony--a rich kid who had everything handed to him by his parents' cronies, and who compensates for it by posing as a plan old ranch hand. It's not just that he benefited from nepotism. Jeb Bush and George H.W. Bush both benefited from nepotism, but liberals don't loathe either of them. The reason is that H.W. and Jeb, while benefiting from a big leg up, are reasonably intelligent men who earned something on their own. Neither is manifestly ignorant or pointedly anti-intellectual, and both managed to win office the old-fashioned way, by garnering more votes than their opponent.
[The last paragraph of this rejoinder, by the way, is especially good for those needing a chortle.]
Chait -- who by most definitions is a moderate liberal himself -- touches on something that is starting to become apparent regarding the vehement opposition to George W. Bush: It is emanating not so much from the "far left," as Bush's multitude of apologists would have you think, but from centrist liberals.
E.J. Dionne devoted a column to this topic the other day at the Washington Post titled "Anti-Bush Moderates":
- Nor can former Vermont governor Howard Dean be seen as some kind of leftist. Yes, he won many left-wing hearts by opposing Bush on Iraq. But Dean has been a moderate, even conservative, Democrat on many issues, including Medicare and Social Security. Rep. Dick Gephardt is going at Dean hard on these questions.
If the rebellion in the Democratic Party were primarily ideological, closet centrist Dean would be going nowhere. What Dean understood earlier than his rivals is that Democrats wanted someone who did not seem intimidated by Bush. Iraq became both a substantive issue and a symbol. If Dean was willing to fight Bush on Iraq, many Democrats reasoned that he'd be tough enough to take him on across the board.
Tom Tomorrow mentioned this as well, regarding the blogosphere, in his recent interview in Salon:
- The blogs, I have to say, are very helpful because you have a whole army of unpaid researchers digging up all these wonderful nuggets of information.
Any of them that you really like?
Atrios' site, Daily Kos, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo -- they all have silly names. Then again, I'm Tom Tomorrow so I can't exactly say anything about that. A lot of the sites are the radical center expressing its voice. They seem pretty much to be centrist Democrats but with an anger that you haven't seen from centrist Democrats in years. That's a wonderful and healthy development. A lot of my problem with the Democratic Party over the last few years has been the fact that there doesn't seem to be one.
I was glad someone finally noticed.
I understand that in, say, the context of Idaho politics, I would be considered something of a flaming radical. (I think "commie" was the description of choice when I lived there.) But I am a former Republican and I do come out of that rather centrist, Western Democrat style of politics practiced by people like Cecil Andrus. In the context of Seattle politics, I'm very middle of the road if not conservative. (In Eugene I'd be hopeless.)
I have to say that before the 2000 election, I always voted a mixed ticket. I tried especially to reward moderate Republicans where they could be found. That has become nigh impossible in recent years (though I did briefly consider supporting John McCain). After the Bush v. Gore ruling, however, I will no longer do so.
I believe the Republicans, in the Florida debacle, proved themselves so hellbent for power that they were willing to severely compromise major democratic institutions, from the credibility of the Supreme Court to the sanctity of the vote to the very real (and not imagined) principles of states' rights. Moreover, I don't think I'm being wild-eyed about this. I think anyone knowledgeable about the voting process and the events that took place in Florida could come reasonably to just that conclusion. Vincent Bugliosi, no radical himself after all, reached the same conclusion.
What does a genuinely patriotic centrist do when confronted with a plainly illegitimate presidency wrought through cronyism of the worst sort, which has in turn thrust upon us an incompetent, self-deluded and ideologically rigid phony, and given him the world's most powerful position at a time of great international historical moment? "Getting over it" isn't an option, not morally speaking. "Getting rid of him" is the only option.
For many centrists, it means becoming politically active for the first times in their lives. The chief beneficiary of that so far is Howard Dean.
In my case, I do what I can: Disseminate information.
And no, I'm not getting over it. Not anytime soon.
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