Anti-Bush: Two Strategies

Sometimes I think that something like the following is true. See what you think:

There are roughly two strategies those opposed to the administration can adopt. Here they are:

1. Identify the actual errors and crimes of the administration and relentlessly insist that people take them seriously, even if they don't care and don't want to do so.

2. Whine about everything the administration does, twisting even passably decent decisions until they look like errors or crimes.

How's that for prejudicial formulation?

Anyway, I worry that we all have a tendency to slip into the second strategy when we should, in fact, employ the first. Nobody cares that an American election was either stolen or close to stolen? Tough luck. That shouldn't prevent us from reminding people about it. Nobody cares that we were deceived into going to war? Sorry, that doesn't mean it isn't true. Nobody cares that the administration seems to be channelling the spirit of T. D. Lysenko? Well, that's important, and we're not going to shut up about it.

But when others fail to exhibit the outrage that's appropriate in the face of such moral crimes, I fear that we have a tendency to lash out, grasping at straws--a tendency to try to construe other, more innocuous decisions and actions as stupid or evil. Most recently I'd point to the Roberts nomination. I'll grant (in spades) that we have a right to demand more information on the guy, but so far he seems like a plausible choice--and a better choice than we had any right to hope for from this president. To demonize him would be (a) wrong and (b) strategically imprudent.

Incidentally, I hope you stopped with (a) and didn't need to go on to (b). But let me explain just in case: When those of us in the anti-Bush crowd complain about things we have no real right to complain about, we merely give ammunition to the pro-Bush crowd. We end up pushing weak and easily-defeated criticisms. Those in the pro-Bush crowd can then (unsurprisingly) easily defeat them, and then say "see how irrational those people are, and how weak are their criticisms?" And that's the last thing we need. It casts a shadow over our strong criticisms as well.

So I say we stick to the first strategy. It's the virtuous one, and it's the more effective one. When Bush does something right--or at least innocuous--we acknowledge that. But we relentlessly tell the truth about his crimes and errors, even when our fellow citizens don't want to hear it.