Why Bush Angers Liberals

We have our reasons, and that is why we're so pragmatic about 2004

Conservatives are alarmed about the tone of our political debate. Interviewed last week in TIME, Fox TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly trumped the standard definition of chutzpah--a man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy as an orphan--by complaining that the country is "as polarized as it's ever been in the history of the Republic." In TIME two weeks ago, essayist Charles Krauthammer expressed astonishment at the level of antagonism toward President Bush among liberals. Newly anointed New York Times columnist David Brooks has deplored both the viciousness and the shallowness of today's politics, compared with the Athenian atmosphere he...

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