Hillary's radical vision

Jonah Goldberg:

At a candidate forum for trial lawyers in Chicago on Sunday, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that the Bush administration is "the most radical presidency we have ever had."

This is, quite simply, absurd. But such boob-bait for the Bush bashers is common today in Democratic circles, just as similar right-wing rhetoric about Bill Clinton was par for the course a decade ago. The culture war, it seems, has distorted how we view politics more than we realized. Trust in government is at historic lows, but faith in one's own "team" remains remarkably durable. (President Bush's job-approval rating among Republicans is 80 percent, according to the polling company Rasmussen.)

Only someone suffering partisan amnesia could believe Bush has been a more "radical" president than, say, Woodrow Wilson, under whom antiwar dissidents were thrown in jail and beaten in the streets. Wilson was the first president to openly deride the Constitution, mocking the "Fourth of July sentiments" of those who cared too much about its meaning. Where Bush reaches out to American Muslims and illegal immigrants, Wilson demonized immigrants and "hyphenated Americans" with a venom unimaginable today. "I cannot say too often - any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic," Wilson said in 1919.

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It is hard to overstate just how bad the Wilson presidency was, yet he is still seen as a hero by liberal Democrats. His "punitive expedition" into Mexico foreshadowed the Democrats' propensity for "limited war" that accomplished nothing. It has been largely forgotten becasue it was overshadowed by World War I which we entered into only weeks after he had won reelection on keeping us out of it. Lyndon Johnson used the same technique to win in 1964 knowing that he was going to have to substantially increase our involvement in Vietnam while campaigning for the opposite. Goldberg also mentions the Democrats memory hole when it comes to the failings of other of their presidents. Obama still has the chutzpah to criticize the Libby pardon as though Bill Clinton never pardoned anyone.