Is That Legal?

"But to the extent that Ann thinks that those who disapprove of GWB today do so tepidly, I believe she's mistaken."

Considering Althouse voted for Bush in '04, yeah, I don't think she gets the opposition to Bush.

And in terms of comparative polling regarding the war and presidential approval, I think you'd have to look to post-1972, late-Nixon years to see numbers that rival what Bush is facing. I suppose salience of opposition is a difficult thing to measure, but at some point the macro numbers tell quite a story. Lots of people have a lot of hate for Bush. Just because such attitudes aren't much in evidence among the media or elite punditry, including among so-called liberal pundits (like WP's Cohen, Margaret Carlson, Joe Klein before this week, supposed independent David Broder, etc.) doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The numbers show that there's a lot of severe anti-Bush sentiment, and I think it's likely there's *more* hatred for Bush than there was for LBJ. The upheavals of the 1960s were deeply felt and often widespread, but I do think people over-represent the anti-LBJ and antiwar attitudes of the time period. Often, folks hated the protesters more than the war or the president. Right now, there's unity of dislike against Bush, and I think the only debatable point is over how many millions truly hate, as oppose to merely disapprove, of Bush.

I think a greater percentage of Americans hate Bush than hated LBJ. And given population growth, I'm certain that more Americans hate Bush than hated LBJ.

Disapproval and hatred are two different things. To hate requires taking the object of one's hate seriously enough to be worthy of hatred. As a college student in the late 1960s, I hated Johnson. Today, I believe that Bush should be shipped to the Hague and tried as a war criminal, but I do not hate him. Rather, I find him beneath contempt. I suspect that many feel similarly.

Knowing what I do of Althouse I very strongly suspect she has no basis for her claim other than what she's made up, and just made this up based on the comments on her blog, one (unsurprisingly) made mostly up of reactionary right-wingers who still think Bush is mostly right.

ELM: I find her commenters to be a more diverse group than that.

Althouse is not so great at distinguishing between her own feelings and objective reality. When she says that "people" hated LBJ more than people now hate Bush, she probably means that she personally hated LBJ more than she hates Bush.

Or even that the people around her hate Bush less than they hate LBJ. Given that she's in relatively similar circumstances (lefty university areas) it's not that crazy.

I was 18 in 1968, so I have some knowledge of Johnson vs Bush. I think saying "hate" really frames the issue in the wrong way. I agree with Henry on that. I did not hate Johnson, however much I disapproved of his war policy. My feeling towards Bush is probably also not hate, but it is a very strong mixture of negative emotions with contempt a prominent component. It is definitely a stronger negative feeling than what I felt for Johnson.

I was around in the 60s and 70s and I marched in Washington against the Vietnam War. I chanted "Hey Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today."

Let me tell you, Johnson didn't engender the kind of personal animosity that GWB does today. Maybe it is partly due to the internet.

I don't remember it at all as Althouse does. GWB may be a pathetic inept figure (not at making his friends money, but at governing), but he is far more personally reviled than Johnson. I think the anti-war movement then was successful: Gradual turning of public opinion, then policy, whereas today, Bush's Whitehouse is lied about why they went into Iraq, got the power and money they wanted from the war, and seem impervious to reason, polling, events on the ground, etc. It is the frustration with the Bush administration that fuels the greater animosity.

Of course Althouse doesn't see it because she was played for a sucker by Bush and can't afford to be honest.

I was around in 1968 and I can tell you that people did despise Johnson, but they didn't think he was a stupid, spoiled, incompetent, incurious dumbf*ck. Which is what an awful lot of people think of Bush.

Plus, I think LBJ's lowest approval ratings were in the mid-40s, whereas Bush's are in Nixon territory, the high 20s to low 30s. (Truman has the alltime worst at 24% approval. Ugh.)

That part of the anti-war movement which was racially myopic and/or naive did really loathe LJB because they gave him little or no credit for what he DID do for voting rights, civil rights and working against poverty, via his Great Society legislation and programs. On the other hand, if you had appreciated what LBJ had done, it was also very difficult to excuse him pissing it away because funding the war took so much money from the positive programs...in the present moment, what credit would any serious critics of Bush give him?

As one who was part of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, I recognized what LBJ did for voting rights, civl rights, and working against poverty. Somehow, though, I nevertheless found his invading a country that wasn't threatening us and killing 20-some thousand young Americans and countless Vietnamese sufficient reason to loathe him.

I was a teenager in LBJ's presidency. America was much more of a democracy at the time, unmarked by the degree of management prerogative in business life that has so strongly cast its shadow over our day and tutored the young bush in his "conception" of the presidency.

That said, I think LBJ *was* profoundly hated for what he did in Vietnam. "MacBird" was not nothing. He was also ridiculed for his personal crassness. But he did many great things for his country that were long overdue and that only someone with his knowledge of the legislative process and his ruthlessness could have accomplished.

One thing that can't be said about LBJ, though, is that anyone had the sense that he wasn't big enough for the job. He was outsized in many traits, and he was a mensch in that he took responsibility for his decisions and actions.

The current little toad is something else entirely. Rather than take any personal responsibility, he acts furtively and hides behind other people's uniforms and other people's blood and pain, all the while hectoring us about how wrong the world is not to be the way he thinks it ought to be. A truly contemptible being.

The times are so different, though, that it's hard to see how people express their revulsion. We don't march in the streets anymore (we tried in 2002 but were ignored). We've been inured to bosses who claim god-like arbitrary dominion over the lives of thousands (Jack Welch, anybody?). Most of us have many more amusements and much less reason to pay attention to the state of public affairs. And there's no more cold war-- paradoxically, a powerful spur to decency in our public and corporate life.

But Althouse should not underestimate the depth of feeling about bush. I may be extreme, but I can't stand to hear more than a few seconds of his hectoring, blustering voice. Every time I hear of a death in Iraq, I chalk it up to bush's account-- another person sacrificed for the vanity or glory or political reputation of george w. bush. He is a death-worshiper, going back at least to Texas days and his mocking of Carla Fay Tucker, alive only when he signs death warrants.

LBJ was a person in a time when it was possible to oppose what people did. bush is a ghoul.

Wonderful posting, Altoid. I'll address only your comment, "Most of us have many more amusements and much less reason to pay attention to the state of public affairs." College students led -- or at least supplied most of the bodies for -- the protests in the 1960s. Why don't they now? I agree that one reason is that they have less reason to pay attention to the state of public affairs, and that is because there is no draft now. As a college student in the 1960s, I was conscious that the government wanted to kill me, personally, when I graduated. (This is not an endorsement of the draft, which I consider the epitome of facism -- a system in which people exist for the state rather than vice versa.) But I don't see what more amusements have to do with it -- is using the Internet what is keeping college students from protesting? What may be a factor, however, is cynicism. Those of us who were in college in the 1960s had been brought up in the 1950s -- the McCarthy era and soon after it -- and brainwashed to believe that the United States was perfect and had never lost a war. Women knew their place, minorities didn't exist, and we were going to save the world from communism. At the start of the 1960s, JFK inspired us to be idealistic. In the late 1960s, the reason that we hated Johnson so much is that he disillusioned us. But then we grew up and brought up our kids to see the U.S. for what it was -- an oppressor of minorities, the aggressor in the Vietnam war, and the loser of that war. So our kids were never idealistic or susceptible to disillusionment. Having been told the truth about Vietnam, they may see Iraq today as nothing surprising.

One more thing regarding Altoid's posting: in what sense did LBJ take responsibility for his decisions and actions? Did he ever admit wrongdoing or error? The only thing that I can think of that might be called "taking responsibility" was his decision not to run for re-election in 1968, although, at the time, I attributed that decision to the fact that war protests were so widespread that it seemed that he could not appear in public.

I hated LBJ more than GWB, but only because I was younger and had more energy for hate. Now I feel just abysmal disgust at this criminal rather than hatred. Also terrible sadness for our nation that chose him (the second time) and thereby ratified our moral futility.