What a rare occurrence: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is agitated. This time the cause for his upset is that I included him in a group that, during the past eight years, was composed of commentators who suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). Let’s see if we can untangle some of Mr. Krugman’s comments.
I don’t believe, and never said, that Bush supporters represent the “real America” (a term I dislike and have stated so here). Nor do I think that Bush supporters today represent, as they did in 2004 — when Bush won re-election — a majority of the country. Nor have I ever said that every critic of Bush suffers from this syndrome. The vast majority of them don’t. But a few, like Krugman and the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait (who also took exception to what I wrote), do.
Rather than allow Professor Krugman to define the condition that afflicts him, let’s turn to the man who coined the phrase, Charles Krauthammer. According to Krauthammer, a former practicing psychiatrist, Bush Derangement Syndrome is “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush,” a condition that “addles the brain … and can strike without warning.”
Now, how might BDS manifest itself? One way would be to write something like this (as Chait did in 2003):
I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. … I hate the way he walks–shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks–blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. … And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.
Another manifestation of BDS would be to describe Bush — in apocalyptic we-are-near-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it rhetoric that could easily come from the pen of the Christian-dispensationalist writer Hal Lindsey — as a “radical — the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. … What’s at stake isn’t just the fate of [the Democratic] party, but the fate of America as we know it.” These words were Krugman’s — who has also warned about Bush’s “radical domestic policy agenda” and his “radical agenda” and his “radical policy course.” Bush was a “radical who wants to undo much of the Great Society and the New Deal” and pursue a “radical right-wing agenda.” Bush was also, according to Krugman, deeply dishonest, seized with a blind drive to win, and turning America into a dictatorship. “Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer live in one of the world’s oldest democracies, but in the Philippines under a new Marcos,” Krugman said during the Bush years.
Mr. Krugman’s columns are so routinely and reflexively splenetic and angry, so intellectually dishonest, so utterly predictable and rigidly ideological, that even as measured a magazine as the Economist wrote in 2003 that a “glance through his past columns reveals a growing tendency to attribute all the world’s ills to George Bush.” According to Krugman’s “thoughtful” critics, his “relentless partisanship is getting in the way of his argument.” That is a gentle way of saying he is a blinkered ideologue, a man whose political passions and hatreds overwhelm his reason.
(Another condition that appears to afflict Professor Krugman is a martyr complex. For example, he described himself to Die Spiegel as a “lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption.” Krugman added, “Sometimes I think that one of these days I’ll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay” – which I gather would be worse than living in America under a new Marcos.)
Paul Krugman is, by any reasonable standard, a man who holds radical views and is prone to make radical (and monotonously repetitive) charges. He has become an almost comically unserious figure — which means he is perfectly at home in the academy today, a perfect representative of the Left in America, and a perfect columnist for the New York Times.
So he INHERITED a mess,it was just a bigger mess than he previously thought.
need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects
Let’s see .. setup a system to preventively hold people under the aegis of the law of the land.
Sounds an awful lot like “prior restraint” of the person instead of the idea.
I think I like the “painful ambiguity” of the status quo instead of the unambiguous “legal basis”.
“Preventive detention” sounds rather pre-emptive to me.
I don’t believe that it is hyperbole to call that among the most wrongheaded, misguided, deliberately untruthful, and grossly *irresponsible* national security speech ever given by a U.S. President.
He argues against a stadium of strawmen, then he lies, then he lies about what he is doing (given that so much hasn’t changed).
It’s the *same game* Pelosi played– do one thing, say you’re doing the exact opposite in order to keep your base happy.
The problem is, he’s the PRESIDENT. His words, as banal and empty as they often are, matter enormously. As much as his policies. He is at least right in that regard.
It really is September 10th all over again, isn’t it?
the president also left the door open for the future release of detainee abuse photos
So exactly how are the government attorneys going to claim before the appeals court that these photos shouldn’t be released, when the POUTS has expressed the possibility that he will do so in the future.
Where did he get his law degree .. Pep Boys ??
#4,”It really is September 10th all over again, isn’t it?”
You hope.
Barack is a petulent baby, so unused to being challenged (because of affirmative action, his use of his race as a shield, and the adoration of the media cult) that he doesn’t know what to do when he is. His reflex, developed over years sitting at Rev. Wright’s foot and on display today, quite clearly is to blame The Man.
Except for that now, he is The Man. He doesn’t get it. He’s the decider, not an arbitrator between the United States and the world of which he proclaims himself a citizen
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
So which is it ? rebellion or invasion ?
And this from a “Constitutional Law Professor” LOL
Given the US Senate voted 90 to 6 yesterday against closing GITMO, you would think Obama would get the point that closing GITMO and bringing the detainees to the mainland is a bad idea. But no, he persists. This is odd.
Cheney, UNBOUND!
Cheney, IN THE ZONE.
Cheney, ————- Who’s your Daddy NOW!
Lawrence O’Donnell was foaming at the mouth, and Buchanan, {I know how he’s real popular around here…} had it dead right, when he laughed and commented that you could gauge the effectiveness of the speech by O’Donnell’s reaction.
All you libs, CHENEY is coming for you…………………
4 Dave Says:
No Dave, we have an unimaginably worse and certainly more troublesome situation. One which can’t be blamed on blind-spots in our intelligence agencies -our collective intelligence, yes; agencies, no- our foreign policy(or lack thereof)…whatever. We’ve managed to put a sociopath into the office of the President as Dafydd so aptly describes.
[...] PM: And here, here, here, here, and [...]
That’s the perception I took away from Obama’s speech when I read it at the WSJ. He appeared to be defensive about his decision to close Gitmo, but he still did not present a plan as to how he will handle the detainees. This something that the GOP and conservatives should realize when Obama gets defensive: he becomes rattled and incoherent to the point of repeating himself when he is trapped in a position that he cannot change by soothing words. It’s probably a good thing that he came before Dick Cheney because if he came after, his speech would be that much weaker and incoherent.
[...] Abe Greenwald in Commentary [...]
RCAR would rather see more Americans die in a terrorist attack than admit George Bush did something right.