I'm always fascinated by the Republican narrative of the heightened partisanship of the last few years, in which Bush is a gentle lamb set upon by salivating socialist predators. Here, for instance, is Ramesh Ponnuru:
Was Bush too partisan? Bill Clinton associated his political opponents with the Oklahoma City bombers, and suffered no ill will for it. Bush took office with some of his opponents convinced that he had won illegitimately, and all of them confident that the future was theirs. His gestures at conciliation — working with Ted Kennedy on an education bill, naming the Justice Department building after Robert F. Kennedy, renominating one of Clinton's judicial nominees — never bought him any good will from the opposition. During the time the Democrats held the Senate in 2001 and 2002, Bush routinely complained about “the Senate” and almost never about “Senate Democrats”: Did anyone even notice this gesture?
I think they may have been distracted by the events Ponnuru identifies in the paragraph before, wherein Bush and the Republicans ruthlessly used Iraq as a cudgel with which to brain Democrats, achieving a breathtaking crescendo of political cynicism when they centered their 2002 campaign around the Homeland Security bill, which was a Democratic idea that Republicans first opposed, then appropriated, slipped a unionbusting poison pill into, and mauled the Democrats for opposing. Wondering why, amidst all that, Bush didn't get credit for naming the Justice Department building after RFK is like wondering why John Wilkes Booth doesn't get more credit for supporting the arts.
