Predicting Hillary Derangement Syndrome
Jeremy Pierce is predicting that if [tag]Hillary Clinton[/tag] wins the presidency, some folks, particularly evangelical Christians, will be subject to Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HT: evangelical outpost).
His note reminded me of a political science professor from whom I took a few classes. He would regularly tell us that if we felt that our lives would be irreparably damaged should the other party win the next election, we were too invested in politics.
I think he is almost completely right. The part I wonder about in his post is this:
I don’t think we’ve ever seen a phenomenon quite like this until the current president. A lot of people who didn’t like Bill Clinton said lots of nasty things about him, especially evangelical Christians who should have obeyed the Bible a little more carefully with regard to respecting those in governmental leadership under God. But I don’t think it was anything like the kind of irrationality I’ve seen over the current president. . . .
I disagree, at least for this part of the world. I’m in the Florida Panhandle which voted quite overwhelmingly for Bush. I should note also that a significant part of the opposition to Bush seems to have been to the right rather than the left. (I exaggerate, or at least I hope I do.)
Around these parts The last 15 years have sounded about the same–just exchange people and positions. While [tag]Bill Clinton[/tag] was president he was pretty much the anti-Christ, or at least his precursor. When Bush became president, the shift to the left with much the same rhetoric hardly seemed to make any difference. I don’t think the standard has been set during this presidency. I think it was already set. Many of the same people who hated Bill Clinton that much will be well prepared should Hillary be elected.
We would perhaps do well to ponder the consequences of this type of attitude if harbored too long. On the other hand, I may just spend my time laughing at folks who get way more worked up than I do. It’s hard to tell.
I think there has just become a general cultural assumption that political leaders are hate figures, and this is fuelled by the media. Here in England Blair was a hate figure, then the media let Brown have a honeymoon period, then predictably after three months they made him the new hate figure. The excuse they used was that he didn’t call an election when the media had hyped up rumours that he was going to; but no doubt if he had called the election they would have used that as an excuse to attack him. Our opinion polls often follow the media a bit too closely, but fortunately there is less of an effect on the real polling day.
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