Ross Douthat picks a fight with Ezra Klein over whether Obama Derangement Syndrome is more intense than Bush Derangement Syndrome.Klein links BDS to 9/11, but struggles to find comparable causality for ODS: “Bush Derangement Syndrome sought extraordinary explanations for extraordinary events; Obama Derangement Syndrome seeks extraordinary explanations for an ordinary presidency.”
Sniffs Ross, “This … does not seem quite right,” claiming that BDS was already in full flower before 9/11—“Bush was “otherized,” like Obama the unpatriotic anti-colonial alien from Ayers-Alinsky-Wright country, not just as a generic Red American but specifically as the embodiment of Jesusland, with his evangelical/born-again Christianity as the equivalent of Obama’s left-wing/exotic past and the spectre of an American theocracy (or even, perhaps, the quest for armageddon itself) as the equivalent of the socialist/post-American/”Obama 2016″ nightmare some conservatives believe the current president intends to usher in.”
Ross also argues that “Obama paranoia has hardly flourished in a policy vacuum or an era of tranquillity. Instead, it emerged following the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, and amid a sweeping policy response: The massive bailout of Wall Street, the stimulus large enough to be dubbed a new New Deal, the bailouts of the auto industry, and then a rush of liberal legislation that fell short of Obama’s ultimate goals but still represented the hardest shove to the left we’ve seen in public policy in two generations.”
One must admire the deftness here: The massive bailout of Wall Street and the bailouts of the auto industry were both policies initiated by the Bush Administration. As for the “hardest shove to the left we’ve seen in public policy in two generations,” well, that’s probably because “two generations ago” was the last time the Democrats elected a president by a majority of the popular vote and held a filibuster-bustin’ 60-vote majority in the Senate.* It’s almost as if elections have consequences, eh, Ross?
But the big difference—the gigantic difference—is that while BDS flourished largely, though not entirely, outside of Congress, ODS is as virulent inside as out, as was “CDS”—Clinton Derangement Syndrome—which flourished in times that were the leastextraordinary that the great majority of Americans ever experienced. When was the last time a major initiative by a Democratic president received even 10 percent of the votes of Republicans in Congress? Surely not since Jimmy Carter, and not often then. Ever since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, Republicans have been engaged in a sustained shit fit whenever a Democrat makes it to the White House. Democrats have never engaged in the frenzied obstructionism that is a way of life for Republicans—the only way of life the vast majority have ever known. The duty of the opposition is to oppose? No, the duty of the opposition is to destroy. The trouble with your crazies, Ross, is that they really are crazy.
*As for the “rush of liberal legislation,” that consisted almost exclusively of the Stuart Butler/Mitt Romney health care plan. Yes, I know a health care plan that both helps the poor and is fully funded is a strange, strange beast in the eyes of the right wing, but it surely beats a costly, unnecessary, and counterproductive war.
