Matthew Dowd's False Equivalence: Obama Hatred Equals Bush Hatred
By Heather Tuesday Sep 08, 2009 2:00pm
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Matthew Dowd tries to equate the left's hatred for George Bush with the over the top attack by the right wing about Obama's speech to school children. I'm sorry Matt, but it's not the same thing.
As Digby pointed out in her post where she talks about the media fueling this nonsense, there is a difference.
I know how she feels. I had the same reaction when George W. Bush was on television every five minute launching invasions of other countries for no good reason and yammering on about how oceans once protected us and now drone planes with biological weapons were coming to kill us all in our beds. It's easy to understand why this woman would be equally freaked out by the president trying to make sure everyone can go to a doctor when they get sick. It's scary stuff.
There's a part of all this that's simply a matter of the right riding the existing zeitgeist. For years liberals loudly denounced the neocons for their megalomania, warning about the ramifications of an America that has become a rogue superpower, torturing, invading and spying on its own citizens. It was a violent, frightening time with some real world consequences that are still not fully understood or absorbed.
The right, with their pretense of assuming the moral positions of their opposition, twisting their rhetoric to suit their own needs and basically use the other sides' own methods against them, have simply jumped on the bandwagon now that their boy is gone. These people are posing as civil libertarians afraid of an authoritarian take-over,something we all have felt recently. Because they've absorbed all the fear and concern of the past years, even as they rejected it, they are now able to emotionally apply it to the president they hate and it has the same emotional resonance, even if it is completely ludicrous.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel does a pretty good job of talking about how all of this is being fanned by "a right wing media that wants to cripple or take down Obama's presidency" and how we didn't see this when President's Reagan and George H.W. Bush spoke to school children, and then Dowd follows with this.
Dowd: Well it reminds me, to be honest it reminds me of exactly what the left was doing to George W. Bush in this time. There was no way no matter what he said, how he did, whatever he talked about that they would accept, react to well at all, no matter what he did. And the same is happening to Barack Obama.
In Matthew Dowd's world, the left being upset about being lied into war, the spying, the torture, stolen elections, using 9-11 to scare the crap out of the American public, tax breaks for the rich who don't need it, using the Department of Justice as a political arm of the White House and getting a Governor thrown into jail, outing a CIA agent because her husband dared to speak out against Dick Cheney, putting industry hacks in charge of every government oversight agency, and I could go on but I'll stop... being upset about those things is exactly the same as the right wing freaking out over a speech given to school children by President Obama. I don't think so.
Login or Register to post comments.
republicanism is a mental illness! Fact!
It is now infesting the democrat party with Emanuel , Blue dogs and centrists...
Our leaders are running republicans on the democratic ticket in areas where they can not win by running on the republican ticket.
Emanuel and the blue dogs have become a disease to the democrat party and our country...
Get it right!
The issues with Bush were straight out policy and cowboy decisions but the issue with Obama is much more subversive and scary!
The Triumph of Spectacle
..........every Empire falls!!!! Now, we're in the Lunatic stage, but falling............ Will the known world fall into a Dark Age, just like after the Romans??? With the vast number if LUNIES on the loose, I think there's a good chance of it.
..in this time
Crap, Bush squandered so much national unity, Dem support, and media jock-sniffing after 9-11 that it makes me puke. Obama confronts a coordinated smear campaign spanning the M$M and still comes out looking 1000x better than Bush in spite of his centrist appeasing tendencies.
a political cartoon about JFK's death comes to mind. The cartoon shows a beautiful, sparkling-new super-highway. There's a box truck with the words "USA" on it driving toward the new super-highway. Problem is, the truck is taking a broken-dwon, crumbling, old off-ramp that is missing sections. The off-ramp sign has an arrow leading to the off-ramp and the words "Nov. 22, 1963." But it could just as easily read "Jan. 20th, 2001."
................Prescott Bush, 1932.
This corporate empire have completely taken over the elected officials and our government.. Look at the banking empire which was given our money on a credit card held by China which no problem..
So they can spend OUR money for these criminal banking empire , the auto dealers , to build the infrastructure for foreign countries , give them military equipment , give foreign countries "our government contracts" give foreign countries and private businesses our public land/ resources .. but when it comes to taken care of our own citizens , they can not find OUR tax money to do it...
What ever happen to the Obama which Americans voted for to have a Change and a Transparent government.. TO destroy the criminal policies and action of the previous administration and prosecuted them for their torture , treason , illegal war and destruction of our nation..
Bush the constitution is nothing but a G.D. piece of paper and I can do as I please..
If this was a dictatorship I could run the country well , as long as I am the dictator.
Bush the enemy is finding new and better ways to destroy us and So Are We...
Where were these d... supposedly Americans when Bush/Cheney were selling out our country and destroying it...
Just look at what Bush/Cheney's PLANNED Economical criminal destruction has done to our country in the past 8 years ... It has gave them everything , even in their wet dreams....
Bush will go done in history as the greatest president that corporations ever had.... He has transfer all our wealth and power to corporations and the world , now the democrats are jumping on the same corporate band wagon with the affords of Emanuel & blue dogs..
Would you call Bush or Cheney a democrat if they ran on the democrat ticket and won...
i would call/identify BUSH/cheney what they were NEOcons,war mongering,corportists.
but after dealing with Cons and seeing their true faces as well as eight years of BushCo, that has changed.
But like I always used to say, I don't think the Cons are ruining America because I hate 'em. I hate 'em because I think they're ruining America.
These people on this program are nit wits. George, "If it's effective its moral" Will and Stephaknownothing? Where's Cokie?
Matthew Dowd? His claim to fame is what, exactly?
..chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign.
That is what makes him so objective on this topic.
his unbiased position then... /snark!!!
That makes him centrist
lol
..........their hand-picked O-bought-ma a 'centerist', too. To me he is a rightie in Dem clothing, a black-faced Bush.
obama does not compare to BUSH. that's unfair and disrespectful in my opinion.
............your entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine. I meant to be extremely disrespectful, glad you got that. Respect has to be earned, it is not endowed by the Creator, and this whole administration has a better front man, but little else has changed in my own personal opinion. Habeus Corpus, MORE war, more profiteering, píllaging, looting, sacking,.................Here is Gen. Smedly Butler, who outed the Prescott Bush coup de etate under FDR..'I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
My opinion is that O-bought-ma is now the high-class muscle-man.
He worked for a bipolar lunatic, Bob Bullock, who was Lt. Governor of Texas under Ann Richards and Bush. He switched to Bush then disavowed him.
To call him "chief strategist" was very nice of Mr. Rove.
That's as close as they can come to a defense for what the right is saying about the president now. Simply, the left did it too. Joe Scarborough is saying much the same thing lately.
playing on the playground, isn't it? At least with little kids, you can reason with them. These efftards don't do reasoning or thinking for that matter... WTF?!
Wrong, Matthew Doud. Simply WRONG.
Death threats against Obama are up 400% over those on Bush.
Bush started a preemptive war with at best shoddy evidence, at worst, downright lies.
Bush was responsible for killing over 4200 U.S. military personnel and was responsible for tens of thousands of severely maimed and wounded, physically and mentally. Bush was responsible for untold numbers of innocent Iraqi deaths (hundreds of thousands and more) and who knows how many innocent Iraqi wounded.
Something is dreadfully wrong with this country when people are accused of being traitors when they protest killing but yet Obama can't give a speech to school kids without outrage by the entire repuglican party.
By the way, I just thought of a topic for the likes of Hannity or Beck or Limbaugh to discuss if they ever talk to school kids:
"Republicanism and Conservativism: The Dumbing Down of America, and How You,
Too, can Drop out of College like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck
and Make MILLIONS by Spewing Hatred and Lies about Liberals!"
some of the issues/HATE the right has with president obama is his management of the BUSH legacy. you know record recession, automaker bailout, iraq war, financial institution bailout, record unemployment, afghanistan/pakistan war,residential/commercial foreclosures,HUGE budget deficit, MEDIcare D program, iran debacle, GITmo........and the beat goes on. like him or not president obama in my opinion is an obvious contrast to BUSH. the HATE for BUSH/cheney has to do with torture,war(s) management,deregulation,signing statements, huge tax cuts for wealthy, non-bid contracts, perpetual fearmongering about terrorism. the RIGHT hates obama because he reminds them of the mess he was
handed to him by the BUSH administration. they hate him because he's perceived to belong to a different culture club.
You said this above: "outing a CIA agent because her husband dared to speak out against Dick Cheney."
I think you need to correct this and/or re-examine the outing of Valerie Plame if you think it was all about Joe Wilson or his wife.
I know that the truth doesn't get much play in America, but, according to Sibel Edmonds, the outing of Valerie Plame had little to do with her or her husband and more to do with outing Brewster Jennings, the company that she used as cover.
You see, Ms. Edmonds explains that the outing of Brewster Jennings occurred because some shady Turkish groups were about to hire Brewster Jennings and someone in the State Dept. (Marc Grossman) tipped off the Turkish groups, who had big secrets to hide, that hiring a CIA front company was not a good idea, and so they outed the company.
And, thus, the outing of Valerie Plame was not even about Valerie Plame, per se, but what the criminals in the Bush Administration got was a two-fer.
with this crowd of knuckleheads in the media, you know... I often wonder if we'll ever know the whole, unedited, real truth about what went on during the bu$hed years!
You'll probably never know what really went on during the bu$hed years, but you're certainly going to pay for it. Meet the new America.
(In Washington, both parties were in on it: that's why.)
but it was part of it. I think they got a two-fer with that one as well. As I said, I could go on but left it there. I figured the commenters here would have plenty to add to the few things I started with, the list is so long. Point taken though. There's been a media blackout on Sibel Edmonds and I think it's shameful.
Dowd was always one of Dumbya's favorite Dick Lickers.
As far as I can tell, Liberals and Progressives have always advocated Investigation & Prosecution for the war crimes of the Bush Crime Family. And as far as I'm concerned, Bush/Cheney should be sitting in prison right now. That's how much those NeoCon boys & girls disgust me.
And yet, even though the issue was the death and destruction of another country and it's citizens, no one on the Left was ever advocating State Secession, Praying for Bush/Cheney's Assassination, or Arming Themselves to the Teeth. The overt racism and the hatred of anything Liberal/Progressive spewed out by these New FOX-generated Conservatives is nothing more than selfish violence -- and this is just for freaking Health Care for God's sakes. The Teabaggers only have threats of violence and revolt. They offer no solutions. They offer no unity. They offer no hope.
IMO this notion of "the democrats are just as bad as the republicans" is the most pervasive and important myth out there. Combat it at every turn.
... united front to "get it done"... they are worst than the Repugs. With overwhelming majority in both houses and in the WH... they're like 300 monkeys trying to fuck a football.
Matthew Dowd is right about the mean-spiritedness of the left's attack on Bush eight months into his Presidency.
At the same time I was listening to Gloria Alred bash Bush in August 2001, I was pleading for help to stop the Bojinka plotters from striking us. It was surreal to be hearing such venomous hatred spewed against Bush while attempting to review the serious mistakes we Democrats made in response to the 1995 Bojinka plot that if left unchecked - would spell disaster.
We prosecuted only a handful of people and got convictions by lumping the attack in with the '93 bombing of the WTC. Two potentially catastrophic attacks resulting in seven murders, and yet a scant few ever prosecuted for them.
In contrast, today England sentenced three of the thirteen 2006 Trans-Atlantic airliner plot defendants to jail for a plot to target seven airliners over major cities using suicide bombers with explosives.
No, it's not enough...but it's still a lot more than the Democrats did in '95.
...But I can say with most surety that I hated Bush first (and most)!
...I didnt hate Obama until he Voted for the re-authorisation of the patriot act, and then after he voted for wiretapping immunity for Chimpy's telecoms I began to get really angry at him.
and then when he voted for the bankster bailout with no oversite...I "seethed" at him (quietly to myself of course)
Its almost impossible to hate anyone more than Chimpster and Darth Voldemort though. ..they are a tough act to beat!
hate...hate,hate.....hate....hate some more...so much hate!
I'm gonna go get stoned (again) and not hate so much anymore tonite. I'll be back. not so hateful hopefully...
The whole "Bush hatred" dodge was floated by the reichwing talking heads after the 2000 election. Any comment from the left was reported with the disclaimer "Well, you know these people just hate George W. Bush", or "Oh, you just hate the president" automatically putting people on the defensive and practically forcing them to respond, "Well, no, I don't really...", After September 11,2001, it was considered an act of treason to even suggest the president might be wrong. It took a long time for Americans to finally stand up to these thugs. Obama hatred (from the right) started on day one of his campaign and it has never stopped.
For the record I have always hated George W. and when confronted I always said "yes I do hate him, mainly because he is totally unqualified to lead our country." It turns out I was right.
The stunning ignorance by these people is truely sickening. They always try the old "both sides BS". It's really annoying! They must think we're as stupid as they are. They mistake us for their ignorant, right wing lunatic base.
"There's a part of all this that's simply a matter of the right riding the existing zeitgeist. For years liberals loudly denounced the neocons for their megalomania, warning about the ramifications of an America that has become a rogue superpower, torturing, invading and spying on its own citizens."
I say, hold on right there Digby! did you see it!!!..."rogue superpower, torturing, invading and spying on its own citizens."
In case you didnt notice...the imperial wars go on...the fascist bailouts continue...the patriot act is still in effect...the wiretapping continues (with immunity no less!!!)...and we continue the practice of renditions...and the pentagons budget remain un-f**kin' changed!
and it looks like torture will go unprosecuted..
dont pretend there all of a sudden isn't anything to be pissed about! (now that Obama is president) Guantanamo is still actually open you know! (closes X-Mas maybe)
not me and you really need to go read her entire post and not just the portion I linked. I didn't say those things weren't still going on. I said it was wrong of Matt Dowd to compare anger over those things starting with Bush to the right freaking out over Obama's speech to school children. Digby's post speaks to their general mental state these days.
I fixed it.
but my opinionated post shall remain there...(with your blessings I hope)
I think there is plenty of "Bush" that Obama was supposed to "Change" ...but hasnt! Obama voted for the freakin' Patriot act and immunity for wiretappers for goodness sakes!!! I think it ok to "equalify" them a little.
one bit. Just don't have me saying it's not going on. I am not happy about what has happened with this administration and keeping way too many of Bush's policies in place. How we rectify that is another matter. The sad thing is as so many have written about and talked about is once you cede powers to an Executive Branch no matter who is in there, they don't like to give them up.
The problem is this country is in such a mess we've got to fight our battles one at a time as we think we can make a difference. Right now, making sure they don't screw us with this "health reform" bill and trying to get them to fix the mess with the banking industry and Wall Street are a bit higher up on my list for the moment.
That said I don't think we should forget about all the other things Obama is doing which are not what he campaigned on, and not what I voted for either. I've been pretty disgusted for a while now. If I'd wanted to vote for Bill Clinton again I'd have voted for Hillary in the primary. I knew what I'd be getting with her.
I wish these shows came with a big, bright, loud, bullshit meter in the background. And everytime these pukes make these kind of statements they would set it off. With lights flashing and horns blaring it would be kind of fun to watch. News programs are not about news anyway but about entertainment these days so why not go for the gusto.
Obama appeared in public without a tie.
The media gave more heat to the tie-less Obama than the mass murderer Bush.
I think that says it all.
Milquetoast: I too am loosing faith in this President.
As a conservative though I haven't been able to stomach anything coming out of the Republican party since Ike was President. Hell, I didn't even mind Nixon who was at least his own man, if rather flawed.
But the powers that be in the Republican party since that time decided they would only let sock puppets run Saint Ronnie being the first and things went downhill from there.
Now the Puke Party is made up the mostly moronic base of birthers, teabaggers, racist and these new idiots complaining of the President speaking to their children. What to do?
...out of the blocks. In fact before the race began.
I loathe and detest Bush in every way I can think. But it took time and facts for me to arrive at that point.
why does the media think help the president automatical equals help him personally as if he's a despot? Cuz when i think help the president, i think help him fix this broken nation.
also, if asking kids what they can do to help is partisan, i guess JFK was a goddamn commie too huh? dumbasses
Pre-emptive war? Outing a CIA officer? Katrina? Wiretapping Americans.? Politicizing the justice dept.? Blackwater? The selling off of Iraq assets? Global warming denial, then do nothing? The list goes on and on. And the guy couldn't put a sentence together, but I digress.
Compared to birthers? Addressing school children? Muslim? Nazi? Socialism?
Do you see a pattern here Dowd?
Wake the f-up MSM and start reporting or even better, stop reporting nonsense from a lunatic fringe that is racist and wants to return to 1860.
q¬ ¬p
o
wow, is this dude out there or what. When it comes to hatred, I think without a doubt, hands down the right-wing wrote the book. Their whole political existance relies on hatred and fear. Their ideology can't survive without some boogieman, the hated flavor of the day. If it's not blacks, jews, teh gheys, libruls, socialists, commie pinkos or mooslims , they will have to find some other social, religious, ethnic or racial miniority to foster hate againist.
Just another right wing pig without a conscience and completely full of crap .
I probably have, and will, called bu$h a nazi and a fascist, but he is, so it's not lying. He did start torture and ignore the Constitution. Obama's crime is telling kids to stay in school.
.
Sorry, but Obama has not yet been taken down by a pretzel.
.
Why is it so important thay these Nazis be given so much time we have elected President NOT a appointed president, we have a President that is working or trying to work for the people, we had a corporate approved president that worked for the interest of Big Business and wanted to STRIP the American People of their Rights. We have a PRESIDENT that talks to the people as people, we had a appointed, ballot box fixed president (IQ two points below his shoe size), that wanted to advance the Interest of big business over the needs of the people. HATRED their isn't a day that goes buy that I do not think of this despicable piece of right wing garbage and hope he dies a excruciating painful prolonged death.bush and his wacko right wing fringe should all be brought to justice and put to death.
Dowd is simply wrong. Where do these guys come up with this stuff? I know, they just pull it out of their rear ends. First of all, George Bush earned the ire of Americans due to his consistent displays of incompetence. When he initially assumed office, despite the awful stolen election, Americans of all stripes were basically willing to give the man a chance. I was one of those. The anger with Bush was not irrational. It came after months of one screw up after another. The right wingers, on the other hand, have an entire broadcast news network, hate radio where they have a dominant voice, and the right wing blogs constantly fomenting anger, paranoia, and fear. There was no where near this kind of breadth, depth, or intensity with Bush. If you recall, even the mass protests were barely covered by the media. Yet, look at the kind of attention these kooks at town hall meetings get. Furthermore, much of the hatred directed at Obama is clearly driven by racism, which has taken things to a whole new level. Obama is pretty darn centrist. He's certainly no radical. For crying out loud, the man has been in office for less than 8 months. What has he done that's been so God awful bad? He saved the economy from collapse. Most economists agree that whatever he did appears to be helping. Obviously, we're still recovering, but we were on the verge of going right off the cliff. There's absolutely no doubt there's been a huge increase in right wing militia groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center is deeply concerned about the way anger and violence is being fomented by the right wing media. Dowd is another right wing apologist trying to convince everyone there's an equivalence between what went on with Bush and what's happening with Obama.
It seems to be a new right-wing talking point to compare the anger at Bush with that at Obama. First of all it is not clear that there is any legitimate anger toward Obama, other than the people who originally did not vote for him, the die hard 20-30% of right-wing nuts, the birthers, tea-baggers... etc.
After only 8 months in office, facing the biggest financial collapse caused by the Bush recession since to great depression, to equate Obama to Bush is a joke. Obama would have to do a heck of a lot more to really piss off the majority of the people in this country the way that Bush did. He would have to miss the biggest terrorist attack (9-11), start a very large illegal war that sucked this treasury and blood out of this country, not to mention the 100,000s of Iraqi dead, trample over the consitution, start the largest economic collapse since the depression, do virtually nothing on the environment, energy, healthcare, education etc. etc. etc.
It is not even close to compare Obama to Bush...
It is funny the Republicans are trying to paint Obama as the same as Bush, even though Bush was their man and they are really just talking about themselves..... it is like they are giving up their ownership of Bush and giving it to Obama.
Hatred toward Bush was real because it was based on his actions and facts. The nut cases hate Obama because he is black and must make up lies to take him down
Login or Register to post comments.