There’s something terribly shocking taking place and I must admit a failure to anticipate it this soon: The creeping rehabilitation of George W. Bush. He was a uniquely failed president. So miserable was he, his popularity collapsed (not over anything huge, except the negligent loss of an iconic American city) less than a year into his second term. And his crushing unpopularity never relented. Quite the contrary—on January 20, 2009, minutes after his successor had been sworn in, millions of his erstwhile subjects treated the 43rd president to an iconic farewell.

As testament to our collective amnesia, many are now insisting the semi-retarded ersatz cowboy doesn’t look like such an ogre in the rearview mirror. Apparently this includes polite company like Peter Beinart, Mo Dowd, and Eugene Robinson.

Byron York had the story in the Washington Examiner a couple of days ago:

"It's time for W. to weigh in," writes the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Bush, Dowd explains, understands that "you can't have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam." Dowd finds it "odd" that Obama seems less sure on that matter. But to set things back on the right course, she says, "W. needs to get his bullhorn back out" -- a reference to Bush's famous "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" speech at Ground Zero on September 14, 2001.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is also looking for an assist from Bush. "I…would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue," Robinson wrote Tuesday in a Post chat session. "He held Ramadan iftar dinners in the White House as part of a much broader effort to show that our fight against the al-Qaeda murderers who attacked us on 9/11 was not a crusade against Islam. He was absolutely right on this point, and it would be helpful to hear his views."

And Peter Beinart, a former editor of the New Republic, is also feeling some nostalgia for the former president. "Words I never thought I'd write: I pine for George W. Bush," Beinart wrote Tuesday in The Daily Beast. "Whatever his flaws, the man respected religion, all religion." Beinart longs for the days when Bush "used to say that the 'war on terror' was a struggle on behalf of Muslims, decent folks who wanted nothing more than to live free like you and me…"

Karl Rove even relinquished his butterscotch scone long enough to chime in:

For the moment, with Obama failing to live up to expectations, Bush-bashing is over. It's all a little amusing -- and perhaps a little maddening -- for some members of the Bush circle. When I asked Karl Rove to comment, he responded that it means "redemption is always available for liberals and time causes even the most stubborn of ideologues to revisit mistaken judgments." But won't these Bush critics shortly return to criticizing Bush? "This Bush swoon by selected members of the left commentariat is temporary," Rove answered. "Their swamp fevers will return momentarily."

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The first half of today's show was about patriotism, and it was juicy. The second was about Barack Obama's shift to the center and John McCain's Campaign Shake up.

A substantive discussion amongst the panelists about what patriotism means. Bob Scheer expounds on George Washington's farewell speech; Tony Blankley talks about how the theme plays out politically; Matt Miller shares thoughts by Peter Beinart of Time Magazine that the right says "America's great," the left says, "Here's what would make America great;" and Arianna Huffington mentions the USA Today poll that says 2/3 of Americans think that protesting is patriotic. Are Obama's moves toward swing voters going to win him votes or just the animosity of his base? And will John McCain's campaign recover its footing with new guy, Steve Schmidt, at the helm.

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So we know the nominating process is almost over, and Hillary Clinton won't be the nominee. There is a 90% chance it will be Barack Obama as the nominee this year. He may win this election, because not only do the current issues favor him, the issues which were once used to demean black people like him, and galvanize white support for the Republican party, like crime, welfare, and the death penalty have been neutralized and taken off the discourse table on the national political scale. The Democratic Party is now trusted on economics, after having its economic legacy near destroyed by Jimmy Carter, and while even tho the Bush economics are really bad, the American people are more likely to trust us not just because we can complain about Bush, but OUR party has had a President to show what good economics, like balancing the budget and keeping the dollar strong look like.

Peter Beinart wrote a great piece in Time which says what needs to be said:

...As it shows Clintonism the door, however, Obama Nation should remember something: without that pair from Arkansas, it wouldn't be here. The 1990s weren't always pretty, but for Democrats, they were deeply necessary. Because Bill Clinton threw his body into the line, wrecking the Republican Party's intricate defenses, Obama today has the political room to run.

For starters, Clinton deracialized American politics. He didn't deracialize it completely, of course. But knitting together a coalition of blacks and whites is easier today because Clinton restored the Democrats' credibility on economic issues and took three of the most racially toxic issues in U.S. politics--crime, welfare and affirmative action--off the table.

When Michael Dukakis ran for President in 1988, crime was perhaps the biggest issue in the campaign. It splintered his coalition, pitting blacks who saw the death penalty as racially unfair against blue-collar whites who demanded a hard line against crime and too often associated that crime with blacks. Today, by contrast, roughly 1% of Americans say crime is their top issue, and no one even knows what Obama's position on the death penalty is. For Obama, that's an enormous boon, and Bill Clinton deserves a lot of the credit. His policies--especially his bold proposal for 100,000 new cops--helped bring down the crime rate. And by embracing the death penalty, he eliminated one of the GOP's best wedge issues. That embrace was ugly at times, as when Clinton flew back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man. But it was politically shrewd. And because Clinton did it then, Obama doesn't have to now.

Clinton also removed the word welfare from America's political lexicon. In the mid-1980s, when pollsters conducted focus groups with Reagan Democrats, they found that when they talked about government help for the needy, voters saw it as welfare: taking money from whites to give to undeserving blacks. That attitude was hugely unfair, but it was a political reality. Clinton changed that when he reformed welfare in 1996. By making it brutally clear that people who didn't work wouldn't get much help from Washington, he made it harder for Republicans to tag Democratic antipoverty programs as handouts to "welfare queens."

...The Clinton presidency restored the Democratic Party's reputation for economic management, which Jimmy Carter had nearly destroyed. By almost 20 points, according to the Pew Research Center, Americans today trust Democrats over Republicans to guide the economy--a huge boon to Obama in what looks like a recession election. Obama owes much of that advantage to George W. Bush, of course. But he owes some of it to Clintonism too.

If Clinton had been more principled, if he had been less of a panderer, if he had tried to be purer than his political opponents--if, in other words, he had been more like Obama--he might have opposed the death penalty, vetoed welfare reform and unambiguously defended affirmative action. He might also have gone with his liberal base, not Wall Street, and chosen economic stimulus over deficit reduction in 1993. And had he done those things, Barack Obama would probably not be in a commanding position to become the next President of the U.S. So as they bid Clintonism goodbye, Obama fans should show a little gratitude. If Bill weren't the person they revile, Barack couldn't be the person they love.

I hope you Obama supporters remember that. For all of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's faults, they restored our party's credibility that Carter destroyed, and neutralized the racebaiting issues like crime, welfare, and death penalty the GOP once was able to use. Those issues are no longer used against Democrats, which is why they fight now for elections, and had to steal an election in 2000 even after a bogus scandal, losing the popular vote. They only barely beat us in 2004 because Kerry didn't do what Clinton told him to do on gay marriage: triangulate, and he also ran a horrendous campaign. Yes, the third way was very necessary to getting elected in 1992 so we could take the GOP issues away and end the era of Republican landslide elections, because this is politics, and sometimes, one cannot stick to principle and win. We didn't need a repeat of 1988, with Willie Horton and being soft on crime. People voted for Bill because they didn't want Bush back, but didn't want another Jimmy Carter either. Triangulation was VERY necessary as it helped to ensure for future elections, and give Bill Clinton a commanding victory against Bob Dope. This is why no matter who you supported in this primary, we MUST honor the Clinton's political greatness.

PS: don't use the Perot myth, exit polls show the pro-abortion pro-gays anti-Nafta candidate took equally in both '92 and '96. And being moderate is not why we lost in 1994, those were congressional scandals, and the GOP only kept Congress past 2002 because of 9/11. Dems got back seats in 1996, 1998, and 2000, a record.

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One of my idiosyncratic little hobbies of late is to keep a tally on statements by Washington politicians and pundits that are express an open hatred for democracy. This hobby is a subset of a bigger collection of quotes I collect that show how Washington politicians are entirely divorced from the political reality they purport to be experts on - a classic example is Sen. Chuck Schumer's hilariously moronic declaration that strengthening the Patriot Act is politically good for red state Democrats (thanks for your helping make the Montana Senate race that much harder, Chuck!). I'm not exactly sure why I focus on this, other than because it is important to always remind ourselves just how different - and hateful - the Beltway is towards the country it purports to represent. Today, we get a beauty from South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D).

In the Washington Post's solid writeup of the debate over Iraq in the House, a faction of Democrats continues to attack the very Election 2006 mandate they were vaulted into office on: opposition to the war. Justifying her opposition to bills that would stop President Bush's military escalation, we get this from South Dakota's lone House member:

"I don't think we should be overreacting to public opinion polls."

I give Herseth credit - her use of "overreacting" deviously implies that there are just a few very recent polls here and there showing negligible opposition to the war, and that Serious People in Congress should never "overreact" to the supposed fleeting whims of the American people. But, of course, the American public has been strongly critical of the Iraq War for almost 4 years now.

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The New Republic was one of the strongest and most aggressive voices pushing for the invasion of Iraq. Their editor, Peter Beinart, led the charge, attacking Democrats who dared to question the move. He and the magazine have yet to seriously consider how easy it is to advocate for a massive military operation based on lies when the advocates themselves never have to face the blood-and-guts consequences of their advocacy. Now, of course, the New Republic and Beinart would like everyone to forget their record, as Beinart pushes a new book trying to position himself as a "liberal" foreign policy guru and a chest-thumping "hawk." But at least one Army lieutenant catches Beinart and his magazine in some dishonest and grossly self-serving editing.

 Here's an excerpt from a piece by Second Lt. John Renehan in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education:

"In 2004, shortly before I left for basic training, The New Republic ran a piece in which Peter Beinart, then the magazine's editor, bemoaned the increasingly narrow demographics of those who serve and the consequent emergence of 'two countries' -- one that serves, and a second, more-affluent one that thinks of service as a thing done by other Americans. Notably, Beinart admitted his own mixed feelings on being a member of the nonserving elite, wondering aloud what he might say when a child of his someday asks, 'What did you do in the terror war, Daddy?' Impressed, I wrote a letter to Beinart praising his frankness and noting my own decision to join the military -- one prompted by similar callings of conscience. Then I offered him what I called a 'public-spirited challenge': One of The New Republic's own should serve, and the magazine should write about it...It was a naïve sort of thing to write. My girlfriend took a look at the letter and said, 'You know they're never going to print this, don't you?' I did. But they did print it -- with a notable omission. My 'public-spirited challenge' had been excised, leaving only praise for Beinart."

The netroots have labeled people like Beinart and his "hawkish" friends in the punditocracy as members of the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade - authors/insiders/operatives who are "very enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it." The fact that members of the 101st would resort to selectively editing an Army lieutenant's sincere letter to the editor in order to dishonestly heap praise on themselves and avoid facing the tough questions about their behavior tells you all you need to know about how unprincipled these people really are. In their comfortable bubble, war is all just a fun little political game based on Washington's false definition of "strength" as a politician willing to sit in their guarded, air conditioned Beltway office and call in airstrikes and ground assaults - regardless of the consequences for the targets or America's national security.

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