Harry Reid's toxic tone

NY Times/Houston Chronicle:

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has called President Bush a loser and a liar and has referred to him derisively as King George. Reid has also apologized — but only, he likes to point out, for the "loser" line.

Mostly, Reid, D-Nev., calls the president "this guy," as in an interview last week, when he said, "I am mystified, dumbfounded about how difficult it is to work with this guy."

In private conversations about Bush with friends and colleagues, Reid has even used the word "hate," though he clarifies that it is political not personal hatred that he feels.

Lately, as the acid relationship between the White House and Congress has deteriorated in battles over children's health insurance and war spending, Reid's public comments have taken a more ominous tone.

"I fear that the Bush years will be known as a rare, even dark time," he said Friday on the Senate floor.

Washington, of course, can be a blustery, hot-tempered town. But not since 1919, when Henry Cabot Lodge called Woodrow Wilson "the most sinister figure that ever crossed the country's path," has a Senate majority leader appeared to harbor such deep and utter disdain, even loathing, for a president, as Reid does for Bush.

Bush and his aides insist that the president has no such venom. "I have got cordial relations with the leaders when I talk to them," Bush said this month when asked about his relationship with Congress at a news conference.

But even if Reid's visceral dislike for Bush is unrequited, historians are taking note of an uncommonly antagonistic relationship, in which political disagreements are worsened by a clash of personalities and personal histories.

"There is clearly some very toxic chemistry that exists between the majority leader and the president right now," said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers.

...

What is clear is that Reid is the one with the problem. The President has never deviated from the "new tone" which he brought to Washington. The toxic tone of Democrats like Reid comes from their failure to force failure in Iraq. Reid has to listen to the whining of the loser lobby and the loser caucus on a daily basis and his frustration with meeting their ignorant demands is obvious in his hatred of the President. He is clearly not the right man to be a majority leader.