[Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law.]

Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents.

But Bush hatred is different. It's not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.

This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr's excellent new book, "Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism." To put in context Prof. Starr's grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.

To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner--and perhaps mischievously--I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, "What's irrational about hating George W. Bush?" His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing.

Reluctant to see the dinner fall apart before drinks had been served, I sought to ease the tension. I said, gently, that I rarely found hatred a rational force in politics, but, who knows, perhaps this was a special case. And then I tried to change the subject.

But my dinner companion wouldn't allow it. "No," he said, angrily. "You started it. You make the case that it's not rational to hate Bush." I looked around the table for help. Instead, I found faces keen for my response. So, for several minutes, I held forth, suggesting that however wrongheaded or harmful to the national interest the president's policies may have seemed to my progressive colleagues, hatred tended to cloud judgment, and therefore was a passion that a citizen should not be proud of being in the grips of and should avoid bringing to public debate. Propositions, one might have thought, that would not be controversial among intellectuals devoted to thinking and writing about politics.

But controversial they were. Finally, another guest, a man I had long admired, an incisive thinker and a political moderate, cleared his throat, and asked if he could interject. I welcomed his intervention, confident that he would ease the tension by lending his authority in support of the sole claim that I was defending, namely, that Bush hatred subverted sound thinking. He cleared his throat for a second time. Then, with all eyes on him, and measuring every word, he proclaimed, "I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks."...

Vernon Clayson - 11/28/2007

Mr.Shcherban, did I recently see you in a movie, the one where a character named Borat goes from one screwed up problem to another while fumbling with the English language. You were good in that so I know you are pulling my leg with your comments. I was fooled for a while, though.

Arnold Shcherban - 11/23/2007

I sincerely apologize, <din't... nothing> was really inexcusable grammatical mistake on my part and my style in written Enlgish does leave much to be desired.
However, I would be the first to acknowledge your apparent superiority in the command of English language over me,
and consequently my mistakes, whereas such folks like you (judging by your recent and past comments) would never admit theirs,... unless threatened to be harshly penalized in financial terms.
At the latter point they would (and did) not only change their views, but sell their friends down the river, as well.
Following along this venue, I would like to remind you that while Soviet regime has been evolving towards more tolerant and permissible society and severely condemned some of its dearest and greatest (for them) leaders, the people on your side of political and ideological specter continue to sing high odes to the leaders who were/are either war criminals or brutal dictators by all standards of the international and American law. Like religious fanatics, you guys refuse to acknowledge the truth and changes in the world, stubbornly sticking to your obsolete, imperialistic and long ago rejected by history, essentually, racist ideological dogmas. (Actually, it is hardly a surprise to rationally thinking folks, since many of you are religious nuts. )
And that’s very telling ideological and personal characteristic in my view.

Vernon Clayson - 11/21/2007

Cool, Mr. Shcherban, your English is a lot like the "bankers" and "government officials" from places like Nigeria who want to send me millions of dollars if I will just give them the name of my banks and my account numbers. I was almost taken in by your gravitas,
all those words starting with p,
"policies", "polemics", "President",
"personal" just roll of your tongue, great alliteration, then you lost me with that "didn't hear nothing."

Arnold Shcherban - 11/20/2007

Mr. Clayson is apparently trying to shift the debate of condemnation of President Bush &Co.'s, imperialistic abroad and elitarian internally, policies to the polemics on the President's personal characteristics, which perhaps are interesting to biographers, but useless from the point of view of historico-political analysis.
Instead of answering the previous commentator's rational explanation of such attidude towards Bush on the part of the majority of intellectuals
and historians, he just continues with ungrounded, generally stated accusations against him, like lack of balanced view of history, etc., without providing any factual and logical rationale supporting those accusations.

Are you right sir, no man is absolutely bad or good, but I didn't hear nothing in this sense from you when you referenced Saddam Hussein or Mudjaheddin, not mentioning already Stalin or Hitler.
It is not that I draw a parallel between those and Bushists; just following your logical thread...

Vernon Clayson - 11/18/2007

And, Professor Offner, they allow you to teach and write about history when you so obviously lack a fair and balanced view of history, which, by the way, is what President Bush, for good or bad, is a large part of. You, Professor, sequestered in your genteel dream world, are just another critic shouting into the wind; there is no lack of critics and no one remembers them in history. It's said that no man is all good or all bad, are we to assume that you have researched long and hard and found that George Bush is the exception and is all bad. Your rant seems not unlike those of commentator Keith Olberman who challenges every breath that George Bush takes but, for all purposes, he is an entertainer, you, on the other hand, hold yourself out as an educator. Ironic, don't you think, that you could do him and he could do you?

Arnold A Offner - 11/18/2007

Dear Mr. Berkowitz,

You may think "hatred" of Bush is irrational. Would it be better if one sais he/she "despised" Bush for all the despicable things he has done, including lying the nation into war, with all its consequences at home and abroad; condoning torture and other war crimes; destroying the meaning of "Justice Department"; trying to tear up the Constitution with regard to the power of the president as against the legitimate power and authority of the two other branches; and so forth. You may not care, but some people are concerned that he has brought our world reputation to a new low, has squandered our human and material resources, and made a mockery of the concept democratic government. That is why I despise him, and his political allies, if that sounds better to you.

And if you find it hard to understand why academics or intellectuals (however one defines such people) are so opposed to Bush, perhaps it is because some of them have a sense of history, and have seen other nations (e.g. Weimar Germany, for one) spiral downward into dictatorship and other deplorable forms of national behavior.

Arnold A. Offner
C.F. Hugel Professor of History
Lafayette College

Vernon Clayson - 11/17/2007

So much for collegiality and rationality, Mr Berkowitz, your colleagues have abandoned all pretext of the impartiality one would hope to expect in the academic world. The persons you speak of have fallen to the beer pub level in debate, next for them may be actually brawling in the street. Surely they can't be picturing themselves as the last bastion against bad government, do they equate themselves to the long ago lone Chinese student barring the advance of government tanks? Or, also very possible, is it because they just didn't like you and the expressions of hate for George Bush was just to call you out? Sneering works for lowlifes like Al Sharpton, people with even an ounce of civility find themselves blunted, much like you did. Have your "colleagues" learned from him and his kind that sneering works?