Democrats, now that the wolf has really come...

Agree or disagree with George W. Bush, with the invasion of Iraq, or with anything he said or did, he is a bright if an inarticulate man with degrees from two Ivy League universities who at no point in his presidency was "in over his head" and was not a puppet for Cheney or Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld or anyone else. The business about his supposedly being AWOL from the National Guard was shot down within twenty-four hours of a general with Alzheimer's Disease mentioning that he didn't remember him from the days when he commanded the base where he was stationed. But despite testimony several who did remember him, official records showing that he had dental work done at the base, and the general's own retraction and apology, the lie was repeated by John Kerry in 2004 and continues to be repeated today.

And no, George W. Bush did not lie about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. "Bush lied" is not simply disingenuous slander, but a whopper which it's as hard to believe many of the people who repeat it don't know is a whopper. Not only did Saddam use those very weapons against his own people and never complied with the requirement that he produce and destroy the ones he had before the First Gulf War that was part of the peace treaty, but in the weeks leading up to the Second Gulf War, Mossad tracked the caravans of trucks which carried them from Iraq to the Bekah Valley in Syria, governed by another Ba'athist regime that is now using them against its own people.

Criticize the Second Gulf War all you want. In retrospect, mea culpa; I allowed myself to be carried away by partisanship at the time, but now I have to agree with you. Deposing Saddam Hussein- "Butcher of Baghdad" or not- was a geopolitical blunder of historic proportions, and there is no getting around that. But George W. Bush did not lie his way into that war. He committed a massive blunder, but he committed it in good faith. The overwhelming majority of Western intelligence services, including our own, told him that the WMD's were still there.  You don't have to slander the guy to make that point.

Blame Dubyah if you will for not taking steps to head off the housing bubble and the Great Recession. Almost nobody saw it coming, and legislation which might have headed it off was repealed by a Democratic Congress on Bill Clinton's watch, but it was on Bush's watch that it happened. Unlike... certain parties... he has forthrightly accepted the blame he has coming to him for his mistakes.

Interestingly, this tweet by one of his critics makes that very point. Donald Trump is everything Democrats claimed George W. Bush was, and more.

Donald Trump was everything Democrats claimed George H.W. Bush was, and more.

Donald Trump was everything Democrats claimed that Ronald  Reagan was, and more.

Donald Trump was everything Democrats claimed Gerald Ford was, and more- although I concede that they've shown a bit of contrition about Ford.

And yes, Donald Trump is everything Democrats claimed Richard M. Nixon was, and more.

But they weren't any of those things. And Donald Trump is all of them- and more.

Neither party is without blame for outrageously slandering and libeling the other not only election year after election year, but also in between. Our increasing polarization is making the problem worse as time goes on. It has to stop. We are losing sight of our common identity as Americans and coming to see each other as enemies. While I am a bit cynical about some of his rhetoric given the degree to which he governed by dividing us, at least Barack Obama recognized the problem. Although I voted for John McCain, my heart was warmed by Mr. Obama's quotation of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address during the victory statement he gave in Chicago's Grant Park back in 2008:

...We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

We are not enemies. We cannot be enemies. And we have to stop lying about each other. My Democratic friends, when you speak the simple truth about Donald Trump, the other side cries "Fake news!," and the American people generally don't pay attention.

You need to accept the fact that to a considerable extent it's because you have cried "Wolf!" all these years. And yes, the Republicans have, too. Bernie Sanders scares me to death, but no, he is not a Stalinist. And I'm not even going to get into the lies Republicans- including Donald Trump- told about President Obama.

But now, Democrats, the wolf has really come, and this time when you cry "wolf!" everybody assumes that at best you're exaggerating and at worst you're the ones making things up. Nobody believes you- except the relatively few of us who have actually paid attention not only throughout the Trump administration but to Donald Trump's career before he decided to run for president.

Frustrating, isn't it? But I'll be blunt about saying this: you yourselves are in no small measure to blame. Now you're trying to impeach a president for offenses no reasonable person can deny rise to the level of impeachment, and the evidence- including his own transcript of his telephone conversation with President Zelensky and his very public order forbidding members of his administration to cooperate with the House committees investigating the matter- leaves little doubt as to his guilt. But he is going to be acquitted by a partisan vote in an openly rigged trial, and you are apoplectic.

Well, that's what happens when you get into the habit of crying "wolf!" Better luck in November. But accept the responsibility for the fact that it's your own fault that when you tell the simple and undeniable truth about President Trump, you're going to have a harder time than you should in getting people to believe you.