For those of you arriving at this post via Brad DeLong or Mark Schmitt, FOLLOWUPS to this post can be found, in reverse chronological order, here, here, and here.
Huge increases in spending on education and other domestic programs that are not even within the federal government’s constitutional purview; a new prescription drug entitlement for the elderly; Wilsonian rhetoric and actions in foreign policy; Kennedyesque manned space mission boondoggles; clumsy protectionism; in its appointments to high-level positions, the most affirmative-action conscious administration in American history; a proposal to legalize the status of illegal aliens; and now, a huge proposed increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Remind me again of why liberals are so hostile to George Bush? Give him a phony Haavaad accent instead of phony Texas twang, a wonky college life, a less religious persona, and an attorney general other than John Ashcroft, and George Bush, in theory, would be a dream president for many liberals, judging by their ex ante policy preferences. But the dirty little secret of American politics, as explained so well by Michael Barone, is that cultural cues are more important than policy and ideology. W just represents lots of things that coastal liberals dislike, and they will continue to dislike him regardless of how he governs policy-wise. But I find it amusing when they dress up their cultural prejudices in rhetoric along the lines of claiming that Bush is running a “right-wing” or “ultraconservative” administration that wants to roll back not just the Great Society, but also the New Deal.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds points out that liberals always hated Nixon, too, even though Nixon also proposed and enacted very liberal policies. Of course, the liberals never forgave Nixon for his “red-baiting” Senate campaign in 1950, which they thought not only smeared a good woman (opponent Helen Douglas) but also (1) paved the way for McCarthyism; and (2) was the primary example, in their minds, of how “anti-Communist hysteria” was “manipulated” by conservatives to prevent the emergence of American social democracy in the wake of the New Deal. Not to mention that many American liberals remained convinced for decades that Communist spy Alger Hiss was innocent, and that Nixon had dishonorably smeared him as well for political gain. Quite a bill of particulars against Nixon, compared to the weak reasons for liberal Bush-hatred. In fairness, I was equally puzzled by conservatives’ hatred for Clinton, who was probably overall the most conservative Democratic president of the twentieth century policy-wise, but also represented elements of cultural liberalism (draft-dodging, pot-smoking, womanizing, feminist-marrying, Hollywood-befriending, etc.) that drive conservatives nuts.
FURTHER UPDATE: A reader aptly notes that Nixon was president in very liberal times; liberals wanted more, and thought they could get it from someone like McGovern. By contrast, it’s very unlikely we would have seen the kind of domestic spending increases we’ve seen under Bush if Al Gore was president and had to deal with an oppositional Republican Congress. Sigh! Guess I’ll enjoy my tax cuts and invest in Euro-denominated stocks as the deficit explodes and the dollar declines to Canadian status.
UPDATE NOTE: Some readers are taking this post too literally. Of course, Bush shouldn’t be a “liberal darling,” but the hatred he engenders on the left cannot be explained by the ideological content of his policies, which is hardly “hard right” and in some contexts is quite liberal. In all, it’s hard for me to imagine a Republic president with a Republican Congress governing further to the left on many issues.
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