It’s All About Bush

James Lileks has another bit of brilliant bleatage where he stumbled upon the very essence of the left these days:

To paraphrase an influential thinker of the previous century: The death of millions is a statistic.

The reelection of one is a tragedy.

And therein lies the problem.

For as long as I’ve been debating with members of the left on these issues, I’ve discovered that the vast majority of them don’t care about the issues – save the one issue of beating Bush. That’s the sum totality of the argument. All arguments that make Bush look bad are accepted, all those that make him look good are ignored. Hence the reason why Abu Ghraib continues to get headlines even when it’s a complete non sequitor. It’s getting idiotic.

A political philosophy based solely on the defeat of one individual isn’t a philosophy at all. It’s simple hatred.

For a group of people that loves to argue that they’re paragons of morality, virtue, fairness, patriotism, and compassion they seem to love engaging in the crudest ad hominems, making morally obscene arguments, and smearing good men and women for political purpose. The level of anti-Bush hysteria far outweighs anything said about Clinton in terms of pure invective and absolute partisanship.

Even if the Democrats do defeat Bush, is it really worth the costs to our political discourse? In World War II the Republicans didn’t go on the offensive against Roosevelt, even cooperating in not using the intelligence failures before Pearl Harbor against the Democrats, because it would demoralize our troops and harm the war effort. They placed their duty to the country above their partisan labels even though it cost them the election.

How sad that the Democrats can’t do the same.