Hate Bush, Love Obama

Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution speaks for many conservatives when he wonders about the intense and lasting hatred of Bush. He makes these points:

• Bush hatred and Obama euphoria . . . reveal more about those who feel them than the men at which they are directed[. They] are opposite sides of the same coin [representing] the triumph of passion over reason . . .Those wallowing in Bush hatred and . . . Obama euphoria frequently regard those who do not share their passion as contemptible and beyond the reach of civilized discussion. . . And it is disproportionately members of the intellectual and political class in whose souls they flourish.

• Bush hatred and Obama euphoria are particularly toxic because they . . . have been promoted by the news media, whose professional responsibility, it has long been thought, is to gather the facts and analyze their significance, and by the academy, whose scholarly training, it is commonly assumed, reflects an aptitude for and dedication to systematic study and impartial inquiry.

• by assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage . . . reason . . .[T]hey infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. . . [transforming] dissenters into apostates . . . and leaders into redeemers.

Why such hatred? Why such euphoria? I think it’s because the American political system is now so efficient. The two parties used to be mushy combinations of disparate interest groups—southern conservative Democrats alongside big-city liberals, isolationist Republican farmers voting with Yankee internationalists. Now the two parties divide by ideology, with each side having built a coalition that holds together quite effectively. It’s because the parties work so well that the battles are close, competitive, crucial. . . and bitter.