Does the Left Hate George Bush?

Let's look at this article first:

We've 'turned corner,' been mugged

August 10, 2004

BY JESSE JACKSON

Chicago Sun-Times

-snip-

Bush offers himself for re-election with the following record:

Worst jobs record since the Great Depression. Worst trade deficits ever. Worst budget deficits ever. Most dramatic decline in our nation's financial straits: from more than $5 trillion projected surplus to $5 trillion in new debt.

It is hard to remember the unity we enjoyed at home after Sept. 11, and the international support that rallied to our side. In a few short months, the president and his men turned national unity to a bitter partisan divide, ''rolling out'' the Iraq War as a club against his opponents. And, of course, the president's debacle in Iraq has left us more isolated, less admired, and far less safe, turning much of the Muslim world into seething anger at us. Acting unilaterally, without U.N. sanction, he launched a war without a plan for the peace, leaving U.S. troops exposed in a bloody occupation and U.S. taxpayers with the staggering cost: more than $150 billion and rising.

That is why foreign high-level military and State Department leaders from the Reagan and Bush I administrations have publicly charged the president with making us less safe, and are urging Americans to turn the president out of office this fall.

This is not the story you hear on the stump, nor at the Republican convention, or even from much of the mainstream media. But it is undeniably true. You can make excuses for the president's record, but you can't simply deny the scope of the failure. Most independent voters are reluctant to vote out a president, particularly in the middle of a war. But outside of the luxury suites, it's hard to believe that many people think we ought to continue on the same course we're on.

Notice in what I believe is an article typical of what I've been reading for the last several years, Jesse keeps his attention firmly focused on President Bush's policies. Upon the policies Bush has been applying and proposing and enforcing. No talk anywhere about Bush's personal qualities, nothing about his wife or children, no predictions based on his personality ("Well, knowing Bush, he'd probably ...").
About two weeks after the President spoke on Iraq in September 2002, I went to an anti-war protest and have been going ever since. I may be a little atypical of protesters as I mostly spent my time with PRAWN, the Philadelphia umbrella group for the peaceniks. In smaller groups, people could engage in more free-form discussion. I did a few meetings with smaller groups and today have gravitated towards Peace Action. But at no time then or now have any group discussions veered off into discussion of Bush's personal qualities.
I noticed on one of the blogs (Atrios, I think) that there was a discussion of a woman columnist, a physically attractive hard-line right-winger named Ann Coulter. The post said something about Ann's wild sexual habits. And that's it. Not one of the lefties in the comments section thought it was worth their time to get any details as to what her habits were, no one engaged in any speculation, nothing. I saw another post on Ann's wild sexual habits in another blog a few months later. Again, the story was a bare-bones "Just the facts, Ma'am"-type story. No one followed up. Naturally I have my own theories about what these wild habits may be, but no one on the Left appears interested in delving into the sordid details.
So my conclusion is no, we on the Left don't hate President Bush. We hate his policies. We hate what his actions have done to America's reputation around the world. We are fanatically interested in seeing him voted out in November. Okay, many of us don't see a whole lot of difference between him and John Kerry. But we're all perfectly happy to see him removed from office in a legal and proper manner, whether that's through a perp walk to the Hague or a going-back to Crawford, TX for good.