OK, I even took the trial membership to read it. Am I alone in thinking it is the most boneheaded piece of pop psych masquerading as essay I've ever seen? First, he quotes only right wing commentators to explain that there is a phenomenon called bush hating and he quotes them to describe its pathological status and its intensity. Why should we treat as apolitical information the obviously politicized views of the right wing media? Second--oh, the whole essay was such a farrago of false connections and smarmy sound-like arguments (sounds like it will be even handed, sound like it will be logical, sound like it will be meaningful) that I admit I gave up and only skimmed it. For the record I do despise Bush, for all the reasons Chait offers, and I think they are all perfectly logical and necessary. And also for the record, I'm one of the liberals who opposed the war not because I couldn't think of any reason that deposing saddam was a good idea but because I couldn't see any logical reason to expect that this president and his gang of goons would actually replace him with anything better. To make a purely utilitarian argument I am willing to bet that the number of iraqi people killed by Saddam will be equalled by the number of iraqis we will end up killing (in order to pacify them or accidentally or incidentally while we can't get their power grid up) if the occupation lasts as long as Saddam's reign lasted. Sorry for the rant, I really am angry with myself for even being willing to sign up for a free trial at TNR. I should have known better.--

All right, apologies (sort of) all around. I went back and read the end of the essay and I see that Chait comes round to a sort of ringing defense of Bush hatred but I still think the beginning of the essay is weird. Do we have to make fun of ourselves using all the Conservative code words and accusations to get to the meat of the matter:Bush is a terrible president and possibly a terrible person and I'm happy to vote one out of office in order to get the other out of office? I guess I still think Chait's essay falls into the "two clever by half" category in that he doesn't really take the right to the mat, he really just ends up rephrasing his variosu forms of bush dislike and even implying that its a minority view.--Kate