Chaitred

As Jonathan Chait has been taking a beating lately, I thought it would be a good idea to pile on by attacking his defense of Bush hatred. In this post Chait argues that Bush hatred is perfectly understandable because Bush refused to give out his signature as freely as his predecessor.

Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them. "For all the years he was president," Armey told me, "Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we'd do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn't like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president's autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it." Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. "Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, 'It would probably wind up on eBay,'" Armey continued.

When I wrote an article several years ago defending Bush hatred, numerous conservative critics were incredulous that I could find the man personally distasteful. Everybody knows Bush is a great guy! This just showed what a crazy liberal I was! But Bush isn't a great guy. He's a jerk. -Jonathan Chait

me: A cursory glance at the comments however, do about as good a job of destroying his justification as one could ask for:

Those of us who did our home-work knew that G.W. Bush was a petty, mean-spirited, malicious jerk way back in 2000, and before. Drunken pissing all over people's cars at a fancy party, leading the hazing and tormenting of frat pledges, his condescending habit of giving essentially diminutive nicknames to his underlings, skipping out on his Guard service, all around sense of entitlement, etc., etc. If just a few hundred more Americans had done their home-work, this arrogant cretin wouldn't be in the White House. Think of it! Only the most brain-dead wing-nut would dare to assert we wouldn't be vastly better off today.

me: hmm, that would make a good bumper sticker