Mark Leibovich on Bush/Clinton division

Mark Leibovich, who I've repeatedly criticized in the past, offers a skewed summary of presidential partisanship over the last 16 years in today's New York Times Week in Review:

George W. Bush began his administration with a promise to “change the tone” in Washington only to end it with a lament over his inability to do so (unless, some argue, he made it worse). Bill Clinton began his second term by calling a halt to “acrimony and division” and then generated buckets of the stuff over the next four years (low-lighted by his own impeachment).

The first sentence suggests that it is a matter of dispute whether Bush, the most polarizing president in American history, increased partisanship and division in Washington. By contrast, Leibovich asserts that Clinton "generated buckets of [acrimony and division]", including his impeachment, without even mentioning the conservatives who tried to delegitimize and destroy his presidency from his first days in office. While Clinton surely deserves some blame, particularly for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, it's hard to see him as the prime mover behind the "acrimony and division" of his second term in office.

PS Contrary to Leibovich's implication, Bush's goal of "changing the tone" was hardly benign. As we argue in All the President's Spin, the phrase was used as a way to implicitly delegitimize dissent, particularly after Sept. 11.

Comments

[David]

I agree that partisanship increased while Bush was President, but IMHO it wasn't Bush's fault. Bush tried to improve the tone, by appointing two Democratic judges who had been held up by the Republican Senate, passing No Child Left Behind jointly with Ted Kennedy, going into Afghanistan with overwhelming Dem. support and Iraq with substantial Dem support. He championed programs that Dems typically approve of, such as the huge effort to fight African AIDS and adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare. Even the nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistn was something Dems have generally preached.

In my opinion, the key to the polarization was the drop in Bush's popularitym which began with his mis-handlilng of Hurricane Katrina. The Dems then saw him as a safe and easy target. From that time forward, they viciously attacked him. As the recent election showed, their strategy worked.

[Rob]

My strong recollection is that Bush faced enormous hostility among a great many Democrats from the very beginning. Not only did they feel that Bush v. Gore was wrongly decided, they also resented Bush's unwillingness to form a sort of coalition government with large numbers of Democrats in key positions in light of the razor-closeness of the election. The 9/11 attacks brought about a brief respite from this polarization, but it didn't last long. (Indeed, even before the Afghan war was four weeks old, the Democrats were sending up trial balloons of criticism of the war, and the New York Times was asking if Afghanistan was a quagmire.)

No doubt there will be some Republicans who oppose Obama as a matter of course, but I hope they do it with less acrimony and vituperativeness than those Democrats who immediately dubbed Bush the duly selected President and likened him to a chimpanzee.