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ymarkovBig loss for the Bush haters
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | November 4, 2004
HATRED LOST.
For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For four years they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the 43d Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a swastika instead of an 's,' the depictions of the president as a drooling moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote and handed the haters a crushing repudiation.
Bush was reelected with the highest vote total in American history. He is the first president since 1988 to win a majority of the popular vote. He increased his 2000 tally by 8 million votes and saw his party not only keep its majorities in the House and Senate but enlarge them. And he did it all in the face of an orgy of hatred.
The smears and rancor were bottomless and venomous. Michael Moore accused Bush of being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. George Soros said the president's policies reminded him of the Nazis. Cameron Diaz warned that if Bush was reelected, rape would become legal. Randi Rhodes told her radio audience that Bush, like Fredo in "The Godfather," should be taken out and shot. Whoopi Goldberg headlined a New York fund-raiser in which Bush was called a "thug" and a "killer." Howard Dean speculated publicly about the "interesting theory" that Bush knew what was going to happen on Sept. 11 but kept silent.
The novelist Nicholson Baker went so far as to publish a novel that revolves around Bush's possible assassination.
John Kerry never sank to that level of slime, but he never repudiated it, either. Instead of condemning the foul things said about Bush at that New York fund-raiser, for example, Kerry told the audience that "every performer tonight . . . conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."
If Kerry had urged his supporters to speak about Bush with the same courtesy they would want Bush's supporters to speak about him, voters would have been impressed. If he had made it clear that he is disgusted when Bush is compared to Hitler or Mussolini and ashamed that such comparisons could be made by people backing him, he would have won the public's admiration. If he had insisted that Michael Moore leave the Democratic convention instead of being given a place of honor next to Jimmy Carter, he would have been rewarded with a surge in the polls. Instead he said nothing -- and the voters noticed.
Bush-bashers reveled in their animosity -- many openly and proudly embraced the word "hatred" -- but I wondered all along whether they weren't driving away far more voters than they were attracting. "Their unabashed loathing may energize and excite them, but they are doing their candidate and their country no favors," I wrote in this space in July. "For most Americans, hatred is a political turn-off." Now that the object of their malevolence has won more votes than any previous president, will they consider giving up the politics of hatred in favor of something healthier and more constructive?
And now that the electorate has once again chosen to keep control of the White House and both houses of Congress in Republican hands, will the Democratic Party take a long hard look in the mirror and try to understand why it has fallen into disfavor?
I told several colleagues on Tuesday that I knew what I was going to write if Kerry won the election. I would have said that the refusal of so many liberals and Democrats to accept Bush as a legitimate president had badly infected American politics since 2000, and that it would be disastrous if conservatives and Republicans allowed themselves to become equally envenomed. I planned to write that while I'd had many tough things to say about Kerry over the course of this campaign -- and while I wasn't backing away from any of them -- the voters had now spoken and their judgment had to be respected. When he took the oath of office, Kerry would become my president, too.
Well, Kerry didn't win, so this is a different column. But 55 million people voted for him, and that is no small thing. However much I may disagree with the choice they made, I don't regard those voters as fools or knaves or idiots. I regard them as fellow Americans. That is how we should all regard each other when an election season comes to a close. In his concession speech yesterday, Kerry said that when he telephoned Bush to congratulate him, they spoke of "the desperate need for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."
It was a furious contest for power, but the election is over, and the fury should end. We are all Republicans, we are all Democrats. And none of us should be seduced by the haters.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
The Bush Mandate
Justice Miguel Estrada, and other second-term possibilities.
Thursday, November 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
So the lawyers didn't decide this election after all. The voters did--including millions of conservative first-timers whom the exit polls and media missed--emerging from the pews and exurban driveways to give President Bush what by any measure is a decisive mandate for a second term.
Never mind the closeness of the electoral vote, this time Mr. Bush easily won the popular vote, the first President to win more than 50% since his father in 1988. The Republican gains in both Houses of Congress mean Mr. Bush also had coattails, unlike Nixon in 1972 and even Reagan in 1984.
While holding his margins among white men and married women from 2000, Mr. Bush expanded his vote among Jews (24% from 19%), and notably among the key swing blocs of Hispanics (42% from 35%) and Catholics (51% from 47%). He also rolled up larger margins in his Southern and Western base, while improving his vote in such "blue states" as Pennsylvania and Iowa. Just because an election is close doesn't mean it isn't decisive.
The huge voter turnout of some 120 million--the largest as a share of the electorate since 1968--adds to the mandate because it means the country was fully engaged in this national debate. No one can say he didn't know what was at stake. The President's opposition went all-in, as they say in poker, with the most relentlessly partisan performance by elite cultural institutions that we've ever witnessed. Hollywood, CBS, and the New York Times threw everything they had at Mr. Bush, and the country rejected their values and agenda, not his.
We trust that the President will not now let those same opponents interpret his mandate for him. The effort is already under way to diminish the victory by insisting that Mr. Bush "move to the center," which is code for giving up the agenda that voters just endorsed. The country remains "deeply divided," we are told, so Mr. Bush is obliged to make concessions to Nancy Pelosi and George Soros.
Yet it wasn't Mr. Bush but Senate Democrats whose obstructionism was repudiated on Tuesday. South Dakota voters rejected Tom Daschle expressly on the grounds that he had made the Senate a "dead zone," as we once put it, for the Bush agenda. Mr. Daschle responded by saying he could bring more pork back home, but by blocking so much legislation he undercut his own credibility as a politician who could deliver. The men who really defeated Tom Daschle were Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and the Filibuster Democrats.
Mr. Bush now has an opportunity to achieve much of what his opponents blocked in the first term. No doubt he will, and should, seek out coalitions of the willing among Democrats--on Social Security private accounts, tort and tax reform, and creating a larger private health-care marketplace, among the other things he campaigned on. But we hope he and the GOP majorities on Capitol Hill don't flinch from large ambitions even if most Democrats rebuff their overtures. The center-right voters who just elected them are expecting progress on their priorities.
One of those is the federal courts, where voters sent a clear signal about the kind of judges they want. Referendums opposing gay marriage went 11 for 11 on Tuesday, winning even in Oregon where the 57% to 43% landslide was the smallest majority among the 11. This is not a message of intolerance toward gays; it is a rebuke to those liberals who insist that courts impose their values on venerable American institutions. Our guess is that the marriage referendums were partly responsible for driving pro-Bush turnout in Ohio, and for making the race as close as it was in Michigan.
Mr. Bush could send an early message here if Chief Justice William Rehnquist decides to retire soon due to illness. He could do worse than elevate Antonin Scalia to Chief Justice and nominate Miguel Estrada as an Associate Justice, even as a recess appointment if that becomes necessary. Mr. Estrada is a distinguished lawyer who had the support of enough Democrats to be confirmed for the federal bench but was filibustered by Mr. Daschle. Mr. Bush's voters do not want another David Souter.
Above all, we think Mr. Bush can claim a mandate on his handling of the war on terror. Mr. Kerry and the media both tried to make the election a referendum on Iraq, and the bad news from Baghdad was relentlessly amplified. Voters were also asked to choose on the question of U.S. action with or without the United Nations, and whether state sponsors are as culpable as the terrorists themselves and must be confronted. A majority of voters (54%) judged the U.S. to be safer now from terrorism and approved (50% to 46%) of the decision to topple Saddam Hussein.
This shows the fortitude of the public and its willingness to bear a short-term burden for the sake of long-term security. We hope Mr. Bush and his advisers also recognize it as a chance--a second chance--to finish the job in Iraq. Voters clearly had their doubts that Mr. Kerry could have done better than the President in Iraq. But they will not support Mr. Bush for long if they see U.S. soldiers under attack without going on offense against the enemy sanctuaries in Fallujah and elsewhere.
We won't know for years whether this really was "the most important election in our lifetime," as John Kerry so often said. We do already know, however, that Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive. The voters expect him to use it.
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | November 4, 2004
HATRED LOST.
For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For four years they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the 43d Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a swastika instead of an 's,' the depictions of the president as a drooling moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote and handed the haters a crushing repudiation.
Bush was reelected with the highest vote total in American history. He is the first president since 1988 to win a majority of the popular vote. He increased his 2000 tally by 8 million votes and saw his party not only keep its majorities in the House and Senate but enlarge them. And he did it all in the face of an orgy of hatred.
The smears and rancor were bottomless and venomous. Michael Moore accused Bush of being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. George Soros said the president's policies reminded him of the Nazis. Cameron Diaz warned that if Bush was reelected, rape would become legal. Randi Rhodes told her radio audience that Bush, like Fredo in "The Godfather," should be taken out and shot. Whoopi Goldberg headlined a New York fund-raiser in which Bush was called a "thug" and a "killer." Howard Dean speculated publicly about the "interesting theory" that Bush knew what was going to happen on Sept. 11 but kept silent.
The novelist Nicholson Baker went so far as to publish a novel that revolves around Bush's possible assassination.
John Kerry never sank to that level of slime, but he never repudiated it, either. Instead of condemning the foul things said about Bush at that New York fund-raiser, for example, Kerry told the audience that "every performer tonight . . . conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."
If Kerry had urged his supporters to speak about Bush with the same courtesy they would want Bush's supporters to speak about him, voters would have been impressed. If he had made it clear that he is disgusted when Bush is compared to Hitler or Mussolini and ashamed that such comparisons could be made by people backing him, he would have won the public's admiration. If he had insisted that Michael Moore leave the Democratic convention instead of being given a place of honor next to Jimmy Carter, he would have been rewarded with a surge in the polls. Instead he said nothing -- and the voters noticed.
Bush-bashers reveled in their animosity -- many openly and proudly embraced the word "hatred" -- but I wondered all along whether they weren't driving away far more voters than they were attracting. "Their unabashed loathing may energize and excite them, but they are doing their candidate and their country no favors," I wrote in this space in July. "For most Americans, hatred is a political turn-off." Now that the object of their malevolence has won more votes than any previous president, will they consider giving up the politics of hatred in favor of something healthier and more constructive?
And now that the electorate has once again chosen to keep control of the White House and both houses of Congress in Republican hands, will the Democratic Party take a long hard look in the mirror and try to understand why it has fallen into disfavor?
I told several colleagues on Tuesday that I knew what I was going to write if Kerry won the election. I would have said that the refusal of so many liberals and Democrats to accept Bush as a legitimate president had badly infected American politics since 2000, and that it would be disastrous if conservatives and Republicans allowed themselves to become equally envenomed. I planned to write that while I'd had many tough things to say about Kerry over the course of this campaign -- and while I wasn't backing away from any of them -- the voters had now spoken and their judgment had to be respected. When he took the oath of office, Kerry would become my president, too.
Well, Kerry didn't win, so this is a different column. But 55 million people voted for him, and that is no small thing. However much I may disagree with the choice they made, I don't regard those voters as fools or knaves or idiots. I regard them as fellow Americans. That is how we should all regard each other when an election season comes to a close. In his concession speech yesterday, Kerry said that when he telephoned Bush to congratulate him, they spoke of "the desperate need for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."
It was a furious contest for power, but the election is over, and the fury should end. We are all Republicans, we are all Democrats. And none of us should be seduced by the haters.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
The Bush Mandate
Justice Miguel Estrada, and other second-term possibilities.
Thursday, November 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
So the lawyers didn't decide this election after all. The voters did--including millions of conservative first-timers whom the exit polls and media missed--emerging from the pews and exurban driveways to give President Bush what by any measure is a decisive mandate for a second term.
Never mind the closeness of the electoral vote, this time Mr. Bush easily won the popular vote, the first President to win more than 50% since his father in 1988. The Republican gains in both Houses of Congress mean Mr. Bush also had coattails, unlike Nixon in 1972 and even Reagan in 1984.
While holding his margins among white men and married women from 2000, Mr. Bush expanded his vote among Jews (24% from 19%), and notably among the key swing blocs of Hispanics (42% from 35%) and Catholics (51% from 47%). He also rolled up larger margins in his Southern and Western base, while improving his vote in such "blue states" as Pennsylvania and Iowa. Just because an election is close doesn't mean it isn't decisive.
The huge voter turnout of some 120 million--the largest as a share of the electorate since 1968--adds to the mandate because it means the country was fully engaged in this national debate. No one can say he didn't know what was at stake. The President's opposition went all-in, as they say in poker, with the most relentlessly partisan performance by elite cultural institutions that we've ever witnessed. Hollywood, CBS, and the New York Times threw everything they had at Mr. Bush, and the country rejected their values and agenda, not his.
We trust that the President will not now let those same opponents interpret his mandate for him. The effort is already under way to diminish the victory by insisting that Mr. Bush "move to the center," which is code for giving up the agenda that voters just endorsed. The country remains "deeply divided," we are told, so Mr. Bush is obliged to make concessions to Nancy Pelosi and George Soros.
Yet it wasn't Mr. Bush but Senate Democrats whose obstructionism was repudiated on Tuesday. South Dakota voters rejected Tom Daschle expressly on the grounds that he had made the Senate a "dead zone," as we once put it, for the Bush agenda. Mr. Daschle responded by saying he could bring more pork back home, but by blocking so much legislation he undercut his own credibility as a politician who could deliver. The men who really defeated Tom Daschle were Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and the Filibuster Democrats.
Mr. Bush now has an opportunity to achieve much of what his opponents blocked in the first term. No doubt he will, and should, seek out coalitions of the willing among Democrats--on Social Security private accounts, tort and tax reform, and creating a larger private health-care marketplace, among the other things he campaigned on. But we hope he and the GOP majorities on Capitol Hill don't flinch from large ambitions even if most Democrats rebuff their overtures. The center-right voters who just elected them are expecting progress on their priorities.
One of those is the federal courts, where voters sent a clear signal about the kind of judges they want. Referendums opposing gay marriage went 11 for 11 on Tuesday, winning even in Oregon where the 57% to 43% landslide was the smallest majority among the 11. This is not a message of intolerance toward gays; it is a rebuke to those liberals who insist that courts impose their values on venerable American institutions. Our guess is that the marriage referendums were partly responsible for driving pro-Bush turnout in Ohio, and for making the race as close as it was in Michigan.
Mr. Bush could send an early message here if Chief Justice William Rehnquist decides to retire soon due to illness. He could do worse than elevate Antonin Scalia to Chief Justice and nominate Miguel Estrada as an Associate Justice, even as a recess appointment if that becomes necessary. Mr. Estrada is a distinguished lawyer who had the support of enough Democrats to be confirmed for the federal bench but was filibustered by Mr. Daschle. Mr. Bush's voters do not want another David Souter.
Above all, we think Mr. Bush can claim a mandate on his handling of the war on terror. Mr. Kerry and the media both tried to make the election a referendum on Iraq, and the bad news from Baghdad was relentlessly amplified. Voters were also asked to choose on the question of U.S. action with or without the United Nations, and whether state sponsors are as culpable as the terrorists themselves and must be confronted. A majority of voters (54%) judged the U.S. to be safer now from terrorism and approved (50% to 46%) of the decision to topple Saddam Hussein.
This shows the fortitude of the public and its willingness to bear a short-term burden for the sake of long-term security. We hope Mr. Bush and his advisers also recognize it as a chance--a second chance--to finish the job in Iraq. Voters clearly had their doubts that Mr. Kerry could have done better than the President in Iraq. But they will not support Mr. Bush for long if they see U.S. soldiers under attack without going on offense against the enemy sanctuaries in Fallujah and elsewhere.
We won't know for years whether this really was "the most important election in our lifetime," as John Kerry so often said. We do already know, however, that Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive. The voters expect him to use it.
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