Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
There certainly were. And there were conspiracy theorists and lefties who blew inconsequential issues out of proportion. There was a cottage industry of Bush ridicule in the entertainment world. Your larger point is correct. Everyone likes their guys, everybody hates the other guys.
A few differences, though...there were people who attacked the legitimacy of Bush's presidency, for sure. On the other hand, isn't it fair to consider that there was at least some reason to do so? He lost the popular vote in 2000 and, without a friendly SCOTUS, the final electoral count could well have been different. That definitely made for some sour grapes, which in some cases lasted far beyond what I consider to be reasonable or decorous. Contrast that with the anti-Obama crowd, though. There was a considerable contingent who didn't accept Obama's original election—blowout though it was—and who maintain a position that, despite Republicans losing the Presidency, the Senate, and seats in the House, that his victory in 2012 didn't represent an affirmation of his agenda.
Were Congressional Democrats, as a group, as vitriolic and obstructionist as the current Republican congress? Was there a Joe Wilson moment that I'm forgetting?
There are many things that I don't like about Obama's administration. Many of those are characteristics shared in common with the Bush Admin: lack of transparency, access politics, executive branch power-mongering, using WH access as leverage on the media. There are people on both sides who will now contort to avoid consistency on these issues. I've done my share of rationalizing about various things. But the bottom line for me is that I just don't see anything that has happened under Obama that is as egregious and destructive as the Iraq War hustle. And yet we hear that Obama is the worst thing that's ever happened to the republic. Come on. He's not even as bad as his immediate predecessor.
Finally, I get that people are sensitive to accusations that that opposition to Obama = racism. I'd just encourage you to remember two things:
1) It was not at all uncommon for opposition to Bush to be tarred as "Un-American." Opposition to Bush foreign policy was routinely equated with support for terrorism.
2) Obama, since the 08 election cycle, has attracted a lot of talk about how he's not "one of us." There has been an effort to depict him as The Other, and attacks on his religion, ethnicity, and upbringing. This is pretty clearly playing on racist feelings, and the Repulican electorate has been getting progressively older and whiter during that time period. Now, this doesn't mean that any particular individual with any particular beef is RAYCISS, but it's IMO unrealistic to pretend that there isn't a lot of racism directed at Obama.
And, as a side note, I think that some of the younger posters may not have been as politically aware during the Clinton years, and may not have realized the depths of the Clinton-hate. It was extremely personal, and I would characterize it as "hate." Talk about a cottage industry—anti-Clinton polemics and radio yakking launched countless careers. There were people who used a national platform to accuse the President and First Lady of orchestrating the murder of a staff member . . . hell, at least one. I think they pinned Ron Brown's plane crash on him, too. You didn't have to go to the darkest corners of the internet to find that stuff.
