Finally, Maureen Dowd Misses Bush!

Most of the time, liberals infuriate me. But every once in a great while, they do something that just cracks me up. This week, no fewer than three left-wing writers -- Maureen Dowd, Eugene Robinson, and Peter Beinart -- are begging George W. Bush to weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy on Obama's behalf! (The Washington Examiner has the story here.) Dowd, who has spent the past 10 years of her life relentlessly ridiculing Bush's stupidity on a weekly basis in her New York Times column, now says that "W. needs to get his bullhorn back out." Robinson, who spends his weekly columns explaining how Republicans support slavery and segregation, says he "would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue." Beinart adds, "Words I never thought I'd write: I pine for George W. Bush." All three of the writers praised Bush's knowledge and sensitivity with regard to the War on Terror and Muslim issues.

Haven't we been hearing for years from these left-wing commentators that Bush was an idiot who couldn't put a coherent sentence together and had one of the worst presidencies in our history? Haven't they claimed for the past three years that Obama's eloquence and understanding of the world were unsurpassed? After doing everything possible to smear President Bush, suddenly they're worried about their beloved president's inability to argue effectively for their precious Ground Zero mosque and they want Bush to ride to the rescue! You just can't make this stuff up.

This is why it is so foolish for politicians to try to curry favor with the media. As long as you seem to be furthering their left-wing agenda, they will heap you with praise. And once they no longer have use for you, they will throw you under the bus. Remember, the press couldn't stop fawning over John McCain as a "principled maverick" back in 2000 when he was challenging Bush from the left. But just a few years later McCain was running against Obama, and they barely seemed capable of doing a positive story on him. Three weeks ago, Bush was the object of universal scorn. Now the left is begging for his eloquence and wisdom. But don't worry. In a few weeks, once the mosque story has blown over, they'll back to blaming him for the lousy economy, the Gulf oil spill, etc.

This is also why I've stopped worrying about what liberals think of me. I take plenty of heat from co-workers for defending Bush, Palin, the Tea Parties, the Arizona law, etc. It would be quite easy for me to try to distance myself from these hated individuals and groups ("I'm a Reagan conservative, not a Palin conservative!"), but I'm done bothering with it. The only conservatives liberals and the media will ever like are the ones that are no longer in power. (They say nice things about Reagan now, but he couldn't get good press to save in his life when he was president.) And the only way to get liberals to approve of your positions is to stop standing for anything.