Some on the right, such as the birthers, deathers and teabaggers, have insisted their anti-Obama rhetoric and behavior is acceptable because “the left did the same thing to Bush.” When he appeared on Meet the Press recently, FreedomWorks’ Dick Armey tried tried this argument again:
DAVID GREGORY: Do you bear some responsibility for the tone of the debate?
FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): Not, not whatsoever. Not when you see the kind of extreme thing you just saw, the—you know, I had my differences with President Bush, George W. Bush, there’s no doubt about it. They were well aware of that. But when moveon.org ran those ads that compared President Bush with, with Adolf Hitler, I thought it was despicable.
MS. RACHEL MADDOW: They never did that.
REP. ARMEY: They did do it. I’ll show you the ad.
MS. MADDOW: They didn’t do that. They never ran an ad that compared…
REP. ARMEY: All right. Anyway. All right.
MS. MADDOW: MoveOn never ran an ad that compared Bush to Hitler.
Um, Rachel, you know I adore you and all that, right? Moveon.org did do that. Here’s the ad. It’s not cool.
Still, the “Bush is Hitler” didn’t take root with most of the Democratic party. Despite what we thought about what happened in Florida and the Supreme Court decision in 2000, those of us who voted for Al Gore accepted that George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001. When the transfer of power from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration was complete, most of us took a deep sigh and hoped for the best.
I believed (and still do) that George W. Bush was a good man. I wasn’t sure he was up to the job of being president but was reassured that he had chosen Dick Cheney for his Vice President. Foolishly, I thought Cheney’s competence and experience would be enough to keep our country afloat. How could I know he would use his political expertise to advance his personal agenda?
But as usual, I digress. I do like a tangent.
Most Gore voters accepted Bush as our president and moved on. (No pun intended.) He was our commander in chief on September 11, 2001, and all of those scary days that followed. He was our commander-in-chief as we went to war in Afghanistan. As the Bush administration began to make the case for the Iraq war, many people had doubts. There were anti-war protests but the anti-war/anti-Bush sentiment didn’t take root with the American left.
Maybe I can only speak for myself and my family, friends and neighbors who share my beliefs. (There are many who don’t.) We may dislike Bush’s decisions, policies and actions, but I highly doubt anyone of us would say he is evil. As far as the Nazi and racist imagery the right is putting out, the worst the mainstream right can be accused of is portraying Bush as a monkey in web cartoons (which doesn’t have the same connotation for white people), a doofus on comedy shows and feeling a perverse pleasure that all the “W”‘ keys were missing from the White House keyboards when the Bush administration arrived on January 20, 2001.
Moveon.org’s ad was not appropriate and they apparently got the message. It didn’t seem to get a lot of airplay. The Democratic party never encouraged its members to yell at their members of Congress. I never went to a local park and saw a picture of Bush depicted as Hitler or any other terrorist. It may have happened elsewhere but it wasn’t often. There was a fringe movement; it wasn’t mainstream.
When I went to the health care rally, I saw people carrying awful signs. These were not awful people. They were people who go to church, care for their families, and work hard at jobs they may or may not like. They shop at Wal-mart and go to brunch at the Pub on Sunday. They watch Fox News and listen to the Republican Party hate machine.
I don’t know what the answer is but there is a crazy divide in this country that’s got to stop.
