By Jonathan Tobin


Furor over anti-Bush Web site shows the depths to which politics can sink


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | In the 1948 movie adapted from Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "State of the Union," a political consultant played by Adolfe Menjou set a character played by Katherine Hepburn straight about American politics.

When asked what was the difference was between the Democrats and his own Republicans, Menjou succinctly summed up the situation: "They're in, and we're out."

A lot about American politics has changed since then, but that little bit of wisdom remains intact.

There's no better indication of this than the furor over MoveOn.org, a highly publicized Web site/activist group dedicated to opposing the war in Iraq and vilifying the current occupant of the White House.

No scandal that can be remotely tied to George W. Bush and no bit of news that can be construed as proof that the war on terror is being lost — or shouldn't be fought at all — are omitted from the site.

But the name of the site reminds us that one's attitude toward the need to keep the fires of rabid partisan debate well-stoked depends on who's in office. MoveOn was, after all, founded in 1998. Its purpose was to encourage Americans to avoid thinking too much about the scandals associated with Bush's predecessor. MoveOn was eager for us to forget about Bill Clinton's flaws and to "move on" to other topics.

But if they are hypocrites, so, too, are Republicans, who talk about the bad taste of the anti-Bush crowd, but were willing to believe anything about Clinton, no matter how outlandish.

IT ISN'T BEANBAG
One thing Clinton and Bush have in common is an ability to drive their opponents out of their minds. As many liberals have admitted, hate is not too strong a word to describe their antipathy to Bush — and it shows. The same was true for the way conservatives felt about Clinton.

Democracy isn't beanbag. Lambasting incumbents is what people in free countries are entitled to do. Tough criticisms, hard questions and heavy doses of satire and sarcasm are entirely appropriate in politics.

But as was the case during the height of the right's Clintonmania, the willingness of some partisans to make unbelievably outrageous accusations about Bush is troubling.

The latest instance involves the posting on the MoveOn site of ads that compared the president to Adolph Hitler.

The two offensive pieces were entries in a contest the group was holding to determine which Bush-bashing diatribe was the best. After they came in for heavy criticism from such groups as the Anti-Defamation League, the group was at pains to point out that they hadn't actually endorsed the ads and quickly pulled them.

In the 1960s, the pop culture of the day dumbed down the term "fascist" from a term that had a specific meaning rooted in historical fact to one that could describe just about anything objectionable. Now, for some on the far left, anyone to the right of say, Joe Lieberman, is considered fair game for comparisons to the Nazis. Rather than being considered beyond the pale, Hitler analogies are nowadays considered clever ripostes, especially among those who cannot control their distaste for Bush.