Weekly Standard’s David Brooks has an article discussing the Democrat’s Bush-hatred and its likely sabotaging effects on their viability as a party:
NOW IT IS TRUE that you can find conservatives and Republicans who went berserk during the Clinton years, accusing the Clintons of multiple murders and obsessing over how Vince Foster’s body may or may not have been moved. And it is true that Michael Savage and Ann Coulter are still out there accusing the liberals of treason. The Republicans had their own little bout of self-destructive, self-pitying powerlessness in the late 1990s, and were only rescued from it when George W. Bush emerged from Texas radiating equanimity.
But the Democratic mood is more pervasive, and potentially more self-destructive. Because in the post-9/11 era, moderate and independent voters do not see reality the way the Democrats do. Bush’s approval ratings are at about 65 percent, and they have been far higher; most people do not see him as a malevolent force, or the figurehead atop a conspiracy of corporate moguls. Up to 80 percent of Americans supported the war in Iraq, and large majorities still approve of the effort, notwithstanding the absence so far of WMD stockpiles. They do not see that war as a secret neoconservative effort to expand American empire, or as a devious attempt to garner oil contracts.
Democrats can continue to circulate real or artificial tales of Republican outrages, they can continue to dwell on their sour prognostications of doom, but there is little evidence that anxious voters are in the mood to hate, or that they are in the mood for a political civil war, or that they will respond favorably to whatever party spits the most venom.
As such, the argument seems to be a full-fledged treatment of a comment Brooks made off-handedly on the NewsHour in February:
MARK SHIELDS: ….Democrats, partisan Democrats, core Democrats, feel as much animosity toward George W. Bush today as Republicans did toward Bill Clinton. They think he is vulnerable.
DAVID BROOKS: Similarly self-destructive effects I predict.
My initial reaction to Brooks’ statement is to wonder what he’s referring to - the Republicans, after all, are in power, so apparently their Clinton-hatred didn’t do too much harm. Yes, it did take a figure like Bush, who could keep a campaign on an upbeat, photogenic message to win. But the solid support of Bush drew upon the intense desire among Republicans to oust Clinton and his protege Gore. So perhaps the lesson to be learned isn’t that the democrats should stop hating Bush but to learn to do so in private and channel their hatred into a more saleable political script. And in fairness to the liberals who have “gone off the cliff,” articles in the American Prospect or a Tony Kushner speech would be no more self-destructive or subject to political strategy than Hillary-bashing statements from Tucker Carlson or the National Review.
That said, I wouldn’t begin to dismiss Brooks’ analysis, which captures the disconnect between the way the left and liberals see the issues and the way conservatives or right-leaning moderates might see them.
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