[lbo-talk] Ivins: The Hypocrisy of Bush-Hater Haters

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Nov 16 03:29:52 PST 2003


http://www.progressive.org/nov03/ivin1103.html

The Progressive magazine

November 2003 Issue

Small Favors

Molly Ivins

Call Me a Bush-Hater

Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their

appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think

George W. Bush is a terrible President.

Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his forty-four years of

covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of

Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the

topic of "Bush-haters" in Time magazine as though he had never before

come across a similiar phenomenon.

Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to--our

last President. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not

only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I

also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of

murder, rape, drug-running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery,

and official misconduct. And they accuse his wife of even worse. For

eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot

with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio

talk shows and "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People

with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people

with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously

racist pasts--all were given hearings, credence, and air time. Sliming

Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an

ambitious young rightwing hit man like David Brock, who has since made

full confession, took that golden opportunity.

And these folks didn't stop with verbal and printed attacks. From the

day Clinton was elected to office, he was the subject of the politics

of personal destruction. They went after him with a multimillion

dollar smear campaign funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing

billionaire. They went after him with lawsuits funded by rightwing

legal foundations (Paula Jones), they got special counsels appointed

to investigate every nitpicking nothing that ever happened (Filegate,

Travelgate), and they never let go of that hardy perennial Whitewater.

After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one

has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill

Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone

else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and

dragged this country through more than a year of the most tawdry,

ridiculous, unnecessary pain. The day President Clinton tried to take

out Osama bin Laden with a missile strike, every rightwinger in

America said it was a case of "wag the dog." He was supposedly trying

to divert our attention from the much more breathtakingly important

and serious matter of Monica Lewinsky, and who did he think he was to

make us focus on some piffle like bin Laden?

"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the

ineffable Mr. Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could

anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush? "Whence the anger?"

asks Krauthammer. "It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of

2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy." I'd say so myself,

yes, I would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election

fight, and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually

won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush

overall. But I also remember thinking, as the scene became eerier and

eerier, "Jeez, maybe we should just let them have this one, because

Republican wing-nuts are so crazy, their bitterness would poison

Gore's whole Presidency." The night Gore conceded the race in one of

the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a

ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through

every word of it.

One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better

haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal--milk of human kindness

flowing through every vein, and heart bleeding over everyone from the

milk-shy Hottentot to the glandular obese--is pretty much a strikeout

on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some

good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real

wusses. Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time

ago--attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a

point there."

To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this

long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports,

it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only

President we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still

some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election,"

well, good. I don't think we should forget that.

But, onward. So George Dubya becomes President, having run as a

"compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own

conservative and dick for compassion.

His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for

the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts

would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut

would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets

$92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we

all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride

bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for

the rich.

By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal

with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into

it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!)

but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to

praise a job training effort, then cuts the money. Bush says

AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly

have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we

still don't have bin Laden.

Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin

doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had

nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass

destruction, and our President "without doubt," without question,

knows all about them, even unto the amounts--tons of sarin, pounds of

anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of

mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.

By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to

say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no

weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East

is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for

one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr.

Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that

George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.

Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People

are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health

insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to

cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with

extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were

left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy President?

Sure, all that is just what's happening in people's lives, but what we

need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September

11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up,

all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just

booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous

diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.

"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a

singular act of Presidential will," says Krauthammer.

You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing

to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have

weapons of mass destruction.

It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad

President. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's

policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed

with hatred.

Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape

because of his stupid economic policies.

If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.

_________________________________________________________________

Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist out of Austin, Texas, writes in

this space every month. She is the co-author of "Bushwhacked: Life in

George W. Bush's America."



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