During the years Bill Clinton was president, the press was fond of using the term “Clinton-haters” to label conservative critics of his administration. The implication was that there was an irrational element to their willingness to believe the worst about the Clintons. Probably there was an element of truth to the charge.
I must confess: I was willing to give consideration to rumors about Bill and Hillary from sources that I would not ordinarily trust to give me the time of day. But, you know, some of the worst stories turned out to be true. And — call me paranoid — I don’t think we have reached the final chapter in that book.
But whatever one thinks about the critics of the Clintons, they are no worse than the “Bush-haters” of today. It is an intriguing phenomenon, one deserving of more attention from the press. We see Howard Dean and Wesley Clark using terms such as “unpatriotic” and “liar” to describe the president, and John Kerry repeatedly using the “f-word” in an interview in Rolling Stone to emphasize his anger with “this guy in the White House.” Ted Kennedy has joined the chorus. Hollywood-types call Bush “stupid” and “dumb” and compare him to Hitler. Out-of-work comediennes snarl and unleash a barrage of obscenities in their tirades against him.
What is going on? The Democrats and the Hollywood liberals harbored no affection for Ronald Reagan or Bush the Elder, but their attacks against them, while not always civil, did not boil over into the wild-eyed, vein-popping, frothing-at-the-mouth harangues that they employ against Bush. And they know Bush isn’t “dumb.” Come on: How could anyone who would be willing to vote for Ted Kennedy make a fuss over Bush’s syntax? No, something new has entered the picture.
Like what? Could it be the way Bush won the last election in spite of losing the popular vote? That’s part of it. The American left thought that they had achieved a breakthrough during the Clinton years. Or might it be that we should take the Bush-haters at their word; that their anger against him is rooted in his decision to invade Iraq? Maybe. But that explanation falls short, if you ask me. For the most part, the Bush-haters supported the Clinton administration’s use of force in Haiti and the Balkans. Whatever one thinks of Saddam Hussein, it is a stretch of great proportions to argue that he was less of a threat to us and the world than Slobodan Milosevic and the Haitian generals who opposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
As a matter of fact, I would be willing to bet that most of the Bush-haters would be railing against Bush for not “doing something” about Saddam Hussein if he had not invaded Iraq; that they would be pointing to Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds as an example of his lack of concern for human rights if he were still imploring the UN to enforce its mandates against Iraq. I am serious. Perhaps Janeane Garofalo and Rob Reiner would not be beating him over the head with this charge (although I have some doubts about that), but you know that Howard Dean and John Kerry would be raising it at every stop on the campaign trail. We should not forget that many of the Democrats who are now attacking Bush for invading Iraq attacked his father for “not going to Baghdad” to “finish the job” in the first Iraq war.
Is it that they think Bush’s commitment to free trade is threatening the jobs of American workers? Can’t be. Bill Clinton was an advocate of NAFTA and GATT. Is it that Bush is not spending enough on poverty and environmental programs and is not as committed to affirmative action programs and immigration rights as the liberals would want? Can’t be that either. Most of the criticism Bush gets on these fronts comes from the right these days. They charge him with compromising conservative principles for the sake of political expediency. You would think the left would be praising Bush in hopes that they can nudge him even further to their side on these questions.
So what are we left with to explain the hatred for Bush? I would argue that we are seeing another indication of how correct Patrick Buchanan was when he spoke of the country being in a “culture war” in his speech at the Republican Convention in 1992. Buchanan was criticized roundly for this statement, but the current attacks against Bush corroborate Buchanan’s understanding of how divided the country has become in recent decades. Buchanan did not declare the culture war in 1992; he launched a counter-attack.
People do not seethe in anger over issues such as free trade, tax rates, and the appropriate level of funding for poverty programs. The hatred of Bush is not rooted in these things, but in his stand on the sexual revolution, abortion and the homosexual agenda. Bush gets criticized from the right for being lukewarm on these issues. Probably he deserves the criticism. My point now is only that he is seen by the secular left as a symbol of the resilience of traditional values, of the small town pieties of the residents of “red states,” where people have not yet bought fully into the transformation of society being promoted by Hollywood and the academy. For the counterculture, a successful Bush presidency signals a turning of the tide in the direction of the kind of society favored by those Americans who take the Bible seriously. 
This is not a good reason in itself for Catholics to back Bush, of course. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. Not always. Josef Stalin comes to mind. But the left’s hatred for Bush is instructive. It indicates that the culture war is real, and that the stakes are high.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
