Washington — Last week I unveiled for the enlightened readers
of the morning Sun my finding that for many otherwise
healthy Americans politics becomes a peculiar kind of mental
disorder, like Tourette’s syndrome or autism. Had I not been
invited by a public radio station in Dallas to debate one Harold
Meyerson, author of “The Most Dangerous President Ever,” in the May
issue of the American Prospect magazine, I would have left
it at that . The next national meeting of the American Psychiatric
Association could take it from there. But I had to read Mr.
Meyerson’s piece in its entirety, and yesterday I had to discuss
his piece with him on air, as they say. The dangerous president of
whom he speaks is the amiable George W. Bush. What manner of man
would call this very pleasant president “dangerous,” even “most
dangerous”?
As it turns out, after an hour of scrutinizing Mr. Meyerson from
the safety of my Washington, D. C.-area residence (we were not in
the same studio, a condition I insisted upon), I came to the
conclusion that Mr. Meyerson is in good health and of reasonably
sound mind, so long as we kept away from the topic of politics,
particularly presidential politics. Even then he was not as weird
as I would have imagined after reading his bizarre outburst in the
American Prospect. We talked and entertained questions from the
somewhat balmy audience (it was after all public radio) for an
hour; never did he punctuate his sentences with a “quack quack” or
any other noticeable eruptions. Yet in his piece he wrote such
things as this: “The American president…whom George W. Bush
most nearly resembles is the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis.” I do
not think he was joking. He really thinks there is a plausible case
to be made. This was his piece’s final judgment.
As I say, Mr. Meyerson is not alone in his disorder. There are
millions of Americans who simply depart reality when politics comes
up. Mr. Meyerson is obviously not a stupid man, yet he begins his
dithyrambic essay with such observations as “Reagan was our first
president to proclaim government the problem.” Has Mr. Meyerson
never heard of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, and practically every president prior to Franklin
Delano Roosevelt? Professor James Q. Wilson has made the point that
before FDR it was widely held, even by American presidents, that
there are things government just cannot and ought not to do. After
the New Deal the feeling was almost the opposite, namely that
government could do anything pursuant to some noble goal.
At any rate, with metronomic regularity Mr. Meyerson beholds
politics and loses his mind, at least temporarily, as he did in his
very next statement about the Gipper: “Reagan was our first
president…to cut taxes.” Again has he not heard of John F.
Kennedy or Calvin Coolidge? What happens to a fellow such as the
author of “The Most Dangerous President Ever”? Reflecting on Bush
II particularly unhinges him. “In the two decades since Reagan,” he
yawps, “the Republican Party has grown smaller.” Actually the
Democratic Party has grown smaller or at least less powerful. For
three decades the Harris Poll has shown the Democrats’ dominance in
party identity slipping steadily from 21 points in the 1970s, to 11
points in the 1980s, to 7 points in the 1990s. Today the
Republicans have climbed to parity with the Democrats. That
statement is irrefragable.
During our discussion Mr. Meyerson reiterated a sentiment he had
earlier deposited in his nonsensical piece, to wit, that President
Bush is in very fragile condition. Actually he is more popular than
any president has ever been at this stage in his presidency since
the beginning of presidential polling. According to the Quinippiac
poll, if the presidential race were run today Bush II would take
New York even if his opponent were Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What happens to a mind such as Mr. Meyerson’s when exposed to
politics? Moreover why is George W. Bush such a threat to its
equanimity?
I cannot answer that question now, but I will aver another
recent observation of mine. For years liberals have been getting
politics wrong. It is almost as though they want to get things
wrong. How else can we explain their huge moral superiority? It is
their path to otherworldliness.
