Bush claimed to have seen the first plane hit the WTC - when did he ever make this claim?

AWW - you are right, that line stuck out like a sore thumb. I'll bet it started somewhere like MoveOn or Daily Kos or with David Corn.

The other thought that struck me was the idea of Bill Clinton as "lazy". Ironically, for a man of such motion, he really didn't do very much, did he? And all his supposed energy didn't energize his party, did it? An interesting point.

Who hasn't seen it?

President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting: Remarks by the President in Town Hall Meeting (Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida , 12/04/01)

Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

GWB saw the smoke rising from Tower 1 just before he went into the classroom, which by that time was being shown on TV.

Oh no, he's a liar. But I just paid $1.779 a gallon for gas, so I still support the President firmly.

David:

One night you'll surely wake screaming, knowing that the blood of frogs is on your hands....

Apologize in advance for being a useful idiot here but I'd have to HEAR the audio. The whole point is moot if it actually sounds like the way W talks (as I suspect):

"...and I saw an airplane'd hit the tower."

(there I go proving Mr. Perlstein's point though)

> "...and I saw an airplane'd hit the tower."

And he may have meant that even if he didn't try to pronounce it. Consider something like "When I heard he hit that ball out of the park..." Not perfect grammar, but not uncommon.

OJ: So, the Wife hasn't initiated you into all the secret rites?

David:

Well, we do thing thing where you put fireworks up frog butts, but she insists we use actual French folk.

"Pleeze, Monsieur, may I 'ave another."

Ah. Orthodox.

Mr. Perlstein's column is a useful indicator of how polarized opposing views of George Bush have become.

The extreme among us are, it would seem, on totally opposite sides of the Looking Glass.

Those who vilify him can see only cynical, unadulterated evil, lying on an unprecedented scale, backwardness, stupidity, bumbling inarticulateness, a lack of sophistication and a fundamentalist (gasp!) faith in God (which in itself means extraordinary hypocrisy); some of those who support him may see only angelic good, but I sense that this is rare, that many other supporters seem to recognize that while in large part he's made some hugely significant achievements against difficult odds and shown tremendous leadership, generally, they realize that no, he hasn't been perfect, not on several issues, not nearly.

At the same time, I don't believe the opposition and support are at all symmetrical: the hysterical level of his demonization is far, far in excess of that of the firm, if measured, support of those who appreciate, even with certain reservations, what he's done, and doing.

And I believe that ultimately this demonization (which has in my view reached levels of---hopefully temporary---insanity) will cost the Democratic Party dearly in November.

(And I hope it doesn't rend the fabric of the country apart.)

Barry:

There aren't enough people who believe the insanity for the country to be torn apart. However, the coming shock in November might be too much for the fragile systems of the over-loaded. Imagine what they will be saying about Bush in 2006. He will be the new Moloch.

Glancing down, I just realized that I'm wearing my "ABB" shirt today. Heh.

We're officially pro-rending.

OJ misses my point. It's because I believe so fundamentally in the philosophical idea behind original sin (tho' not the theology) that it scares me so much when I encouter--over and over again, in all different kinds of forum--people who make the post hoc ergo proctor hoc move of saying Bush couldn't have done such and such a bad thing because he is fundamentally a good person.

Do you deny that such folks are abroad, thickly, across the land? If I wasn't able to convey that in my article I failed. Unfortunately I lost the email with the best quote to that effect.

I am not a secular utopian. I fear that the reverse-domino theorists who believed that Iraq could be a light unto the Middle Eastern nations, democracy-wise, are. It pains me that the most enduringly wise lesson of conservatism--not to immanentize the eschaton--has so seized the right's foreign policy thinking.

Rick:

Of course it's not a philosophy but a theology--you have to have the Creation for human nature to be immutable and for rights to pre-exist the state.

If you troll around Free Republic I imagine you can find any kind of nut you want to build a story around. If you're talking about mainstream Christian conservatism you'll find no significant body of people that says "good" people don't do bad things. Indeed, George Bush doesn't believe that his faith keeps him from doing bad things so the story would seem to have no meaningful point at all.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure why you think Iraqis are so different than you and me that they don't want peace, freedom, and prosperity. Of course, the Realists were telling us that the Asiatics, Slavs, etc. were that much different twenty years ago. Just seems strange that the Right having purged itself of such Kissingerian racial twaddle the Left has embraced it.

You know, I like Perlstein and he's a smart cat. Heck, I've even talked with him a couple of times and come away impressed but he makes that same mistake that every liberal does when they write about conservatives: they don't understand the subject matter. They start with a premise that's clearly wrong and despite their research they stick with it.

Pity that much talent is used so poorly sometimes.

One of the constant threads throughout the Bible, a book we conservative Christians take quite seriously, is the redemption of "good" people who do bad things. Moses, murderer; David (a man after God's own heart) murderer; Paul, accessory to murder; Isaiah; blasphemer; Peter, blasphemer and traitor; and we won't even get into the Judges.

The point here Rick is that you and your colleagues on the left go out of your way to find the extremists in the Christian community, (or perhaps the less articulate) and then generalize the entire body of us from them. We do have some extremists as does any large body of people but they aren't typical. We are clear that the President is capable of a multitude of sins, as are we all and we will judge him on his actual deeds, not on what he might be capable of. But I have to say that we do resent it when people like you misrepresent us so that your pseudo-intellectual readers can maintain their smug sense of superiority. If you approached us honestly, you might find that we are a bit deeper and more complex than the simple cartoon characters you betray. It would probably get the piece spiked at the voice but it would be more honest.

'Good' and 'bad' have become essentially meaningless terms. Trying to apply them in political discourse only adds to the confusion: i.e., Bill Clinton is a good politician, while John Kerry is not.

As the question goes, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."

When we watch politicians in action, we hear their words and look at their lives. The Right saw that Clinton was a self-obsessed satyr; the Left sees that Bush is the devil. Which is right? By what standard do we judge?

Remember what David Maraniss said about Clinton: the people who know him the best despise him.

Iraqis are sufficiently different from you and me that they -- or a substantial number of them -- like to blow themselves up outside police stations.

And there society is sufficiently diffferent from ours that the supply of such people, which would be a wasting asset here, seems inexhaustible there.

I cannot see what the difference is, in practical terms, between good people who do bad things and bad people who do bad things.

Don't results count?

The U.S. had its own problems with the Weather Underground folks in the late 1960s and early 70s. True, Ms. Wilkerson and her pals didn't mean to blow themselves up, just other people, but we're not so far removed from a time when people in opposition to the U.S. government saw domestic bombings as a valid political tactic.

There's certainly as much or more anger out there at Bush over Iraq than there was at Nixon over Vietnam 35 years ago, but in the wake of 9/11, those who would cosider going the Weather Underground (or Tim McVeigh) route have to take public reaction into consideration. So pointing at Iraq today and saying that's the way it will always be assumes the general population will be willing to tolerate the situation into the far future.

Harry:

The Iraquis gripe is that the guys from out of town are doing the self-imolation numbers.

One of the important things to keep in mind about suicide bombing is that no relative of a member of the high comamnd of a Palestinain organization that conducts suicide bombings has ever been a bomber. All of the bombers have been chumps.

Harry:

You though believe you're a good person who only does good things. You're not even utopian, just delusional.

John:

Are you old enough to remember '72? They hated Nixon way more.

OJ --

The hate may have been more intense among the true believers, but the left back then saw no problem with spreading the bile around to others, such as the "baby killer" soliers. As with national tolerance for protest bombings post-9/11, the people who would be Weathern Underground types or sympathizers today know spitting on soldiers or tagging them as baby killers is politically gauche (well, outside of Seattle, anyway), so if you can't lie about them, that leaves channeling all that hostility directly at the people in charge. That may explain why Bush has more tin-foil hat lies told about his actions than Nixon ever suffered through.

John:

Recall though that the Underground was romanticized. The students at Kent State were lionized. The press sided with the protestors at the Chicago convention. There was essentially no conservative press at that point and few conservative voices in mainstream media outlets so the tone of the public comment was favorable to the haters.

Today we have a much wider range of voices and it's impossible to imagine a domestic terrorist group becoming media darlings. Free market disciple would savage any news outlet that tried.

OJ --

While there are far more alternative sources of news now, were it not for 9/11 the mainstream press would feel far less cirumspect about continuing to romanticize the actions of the early 70s.

Remember, the New York Times printed that gushing profile of Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers on Sept. 11. The blogosphere was in place by then, though not at its post-9/11 size and effectiveness, while other alternatives, such as talk radio and Fox News, were well established. Didn't matter to the Times until the planes started slamming into the buildings. And the paper was still cirumspect, but sympathetic, to Kathy Boudin when she was granted parole a year ago.

The terror attacks and the alternative media outlets will keep a lot of the regular press from waxing nostagic about the past radical activities (in public, at least), and the public's memories of Sept. 11 will keep that form of protest from being resurrected by domestic radicals, at least for a while. But with a sitation of, say Bush in the White House in 2007 and the U.S. waging a war against Iran or North Korea, I wouldn't bet the rent money that the more violent opponents of the war wouldn't decide that six years is far enough away from Sept. 11 to justify at least some new ROTC or government building bathroom bombings.

Any war against North Korea will be a Kosovo/Afghanistan type of campaign, absolutely NOT an Iraq style campaign.

If we decide to undertake it, (and I hope that we do), it'll open with massive bombing, the likes of which the North Korean elites have never dreamt possible, even on their worst nights.

What will not happen is any large scale invasion by US forces.

John:

The difference being that the Right is strong enough now and middle America tired enough of such nonsense that major riots or a campaign of violence would be met unapologetically with like violence. No one minds when a mayor/governor has the cops go after WTO protestors with a vengeance.

Harry:

We have had our own American version of the suicide bomber: recall the Columbine High School massacre?

We also have a higher % of our population incarcerated then any other nation.

Depends on your definition of incarceration. North Korea arguably has a rate of close to 100%.

I'm not concerned, here about elite or media opinion, but about broad social consensus.

The difference between a Weather Underground bomber and an Iraqi suicide bomber for hire is as great as between a delegate to the Republican National Convention and an Iraqi suicide bomber.

The key phrase in my first statement, to my way of thinking, was "wasting asset."

Sure, more than once nutcases like McVeigh have thought they could ignite the masses by sacrifice. And here they fizzle.

In Arab countries, they may not spark political (as opposed to chemical) explosions, but they sputter on endlessly.

Arabs appear to be unable to learn from experience.

Why? The Islamic world is reforming pretty rapidly--far faster than the West liberalized anyway. Of course, they have an advantage that the West didn't--globalization.

>Imagine what they will be saying about Bush in
>2006. He will be the new Moloch.

James Lileks over at The Daily Bleat speculated on similar lines some weeks ago. The level of anti-Bush hatred among True Believers is so high and elevated to such cosmic importance that if Bush wins re-election, it would not be surprising if domestic terrorism returns and the bombs start going off in a general lash-out against "Bushitler!".