> Interesting -- but are these comparable? Are you sure it's not the
> era that's the difference? Because my impression is that in our era,
> the National Review under Bush had pretty much exactly the same
> position as the Nation has under Obama. (I.e., defending it even when
> it betrayed central principles, identifying with it, and yet somehow
> simultaneously managing to see itself as a critical nudger and radical
> lantern holder.)
>
> So I guess if were you, I'd be curious to at least take a look at the
> Nation under Truman and see what that tone was like.
>
> It might be that most political intellectuals saw being apart as part
> of their identity back then. There's been quite a successful
> incorporation of house intellectuals by the white houses of both
> parties since then.
I think you're right that the Nation probably would have had a lot of criticism of Truman. But that's because Truman was viewed as a shocking and unexpected regime shift away from Roosevelt's liberalism. It's not because it was a different era. The NR issues I was looking at were from 1955-1960. So a better comparison would have been the Nation's attitude toward Adlai Stevenson in 1956. I'm pretty sure they were madly for Adlai.
There's also an obvious asymmetry here: Obama's position relative to progressivism is very much like Eisenhower's was to conservatism - i.e., a large measure of fakery and meritriciousness. But Bush really was the instrument of the conservative movement, more so even than Reagan. So it's understandable NR would defend him more.
SA