Glenn Greenwald: How to avoid the GOP's mistakes during the Bush years?
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder makes the following observation:
From day one of his administration, the left has held Barack Obama's feet to the fire way more than the right ever did to George W. Bush -- at least until Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Put another way: the diversity of opinion about Obama and his presidency among activist Dems far exceeds early Bush-era diversity of opinion among activist GOPers.
Is there any doubt that this is accurate? I can't imagine how there could be. And is there anyone who believes that this is a bad thing?
It's worth remembering how the GOP and the Right treated Bush and the role they played in his presidency. Ambinder says that it wasn't until the Miers nomination that the Right criticized Bush in any meaningful way. That's pretty extraordinary, since that took place in September, 2005 -- almost five full years into the Bush presidency. For the first five years, look at what happened:
The Right's leading commentators saw their role as defending the Bush administration no matter what it did, rather than expressing their honest opinions, as Rush Limbaugh infamously admitted after the GOP lost control of Congress in the 2006 election: "I feel liberated. . . I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried." Personalized hagiographies were churned out glorifying the President in borderline-religious tones. Conservative groups devoted themselves to blind defense of the White House -- justifying whatever Bush did and turning themselves into a political arm of the administration -- rather than exerting pressure for adherence to their agenda.
Conservatives who criticized Bush were deemed the enemy and were excommunicated: see this 2006 New York Times profile of Bruce Bartlett to see how that worked -- "An Outspoken Conservative Loses his Place at the Table" -- or look at how people like Andrew Sullivan were suddenly deemed "liberals" because of their criticisms of Bush. Those who, in general, criticized the President too harshly were deemed unpatriotic, standing with Terrorists, and suffering from personalized and emotional hatred (Bush Derangement Syndrome) -- as though excessive criticism was some sort of offense against decency or even a personal failing. As Bill Kristol himself acknowledged about the Right during Bush's first term: "Bush was the movement and the cause." One of the first widely-cited posts I ever wrote after I began blogging was about this phenomenon, titled "Do Bush followers have a political ideology?," which expressed the point this way: "'conservatism' is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as 'liberal' is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government."...
... It's fine that some people believe the most constructive thing to do is to support the Democratic Party and Obama, and whose primary thrill is dressing up in tuxedos and going into hotel ballrooms to swoon with adoration for the President like he's a rock star. He's likable and inspires a lot of people with his rhetoric, so that's understandable, or at least inevitable. And it's also fine, even useful, to have organizations close to the administration if they maintain at least some independence. But unless one wants to replicate the same dynamic that prevailed in the Bush era, it's vital that not everyone be devoted to that mission. Without individuals and groups devoted primarily to these issues rather than the President and the Party, those issues will be ignored. That's just how politicians, by definition, function. And whatever else is true, creating a climate where criticizing Obama is equated with a breach of one's citizenship or progressive duties -- even where the criticism is aggressive and "disrespectful," as one could describe Taibbi's critique -- is the surest way to follow the GOP down its path of well-deserved self-destruction.