Date:   10/21/2003 12:08:09 AM ( 21 y ago)
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Posted on Sun, Oct. 19, 2003
Hatred of Bush? Not here
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

I'm a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader's record. As a group, we are making satisfying inroads on the bestseller lists.

Our points of view vary, our modes of attack differ -- some of us are funny and some somber -- but it continues to amaze me that there is so little overlap in what we have written. What's wrong with this administration is not a short list.

Nevertheless, we are, one and all, being dismissed by right-wing media, with their unmistakable lock-step precision -- that everybody-singing-off-the-same-page that so distinguishes the right -- as "Bush-haters." Not a radio call-in show goes by, not a right-wing host fails to mention that I am "just another Bush-hater."

Like most Americans, I was sick of the politics of personal destruction long before it all finally limped through the idiotic Clinton impeachment hearings. I wrote this new book (Bushwhacked -- my publisher would want me to mention it) in part as an effort to show how I think political differences should be addressed.

This is a book about policy. In particular, it is a book about how policy affects "average, ordinary, everyday Americans."

Over many years of covering politics, I have known and liked a lot of politicians with whom I never agreed about a single thing. Bob Dole and Alan Simpson come to mind as two of my favorite Republicans, and I could list Texas conservatives by the dozens.

As it happens, I have known George W. Bush for a long time -- not well, but for a long time. Since we were both in high school. He went to prep school in the East, and I went to prep school in Houston, but he hung around with friends of mine, dated girls I knew. I would never claim that we were friends, but he was someone I vaguely knew.

For the six years he was governor of Texas, I watched him closely and filtered my view of him through, among others, that of the since-deceased Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, his mentor in Texas politics. Although Bush rather promptly becomes defensive and prickly when questioned, he is by and large perfectly affable. You would have to work at it to dislike him personally.

On the occasions when we met, we would "rib" one another. I personally hope that the photo of me sitting on his lap at a Christmas party with him dressed as Santa has disappeared for all time.

Did you know that it is quite possible not to hate someone and at the same time notice that their policies are disastrous for people in this country? Quite a thought, isn't it? Grown-ups can actually do that -- can think a policy is disastrous without hating the person behind it. Lyndon B. Johnson comes to mind -- a great president who was disastrously wrong about Vietnam.

Imagine how startled I was to find myself cited in a column by David Brooks, the new conservative at The New York Times, whom I had rather liked for his reasonableness, as a "Bush-hater" and someone who "knows less than the KKK does about the NAACP."

Holy cow. Here I am thinking that I actually know something about Bush just because I already wrote two books about him, and that his biggest problem is that he's real limited in his worldview. Solely due to an accident of geography, I happen to be quite familiar with both the KKK and the NAACP, and I figure this guy is the politician equivalent of that for me.

I would like to remind all the lock-step conservatives that there is a difference between hatred and anger. What you are looking at in this country is not hatred of Bush -- a perfectly affable guy -- but a growing anger.

Beware the anger of the legions left too long in Iraq without enough help; of the unemployed; of the uninsured; of those who were left without workers' comp; of those who have lost health insurance, overtime, the right to organize.

Beware the anger of those whose pensions and savings are gone because of Bush pals like "Kenny Boy" Lay. Beware the anger of middle-class investors in mutual funds; the anger of those who see the big rich take their money offshore so they won't have to pay taxes, those who watch the corporations get special tax breaks for exporting jobs abroad; the anger of those who are shunted aside while the CEOs of their companies make more than a hundred million.

You don't have to be hateful to have bad policies. You just have to be wrong.

 

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