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In 2003, Charles Krauthammer wrote about the extreme anxiety engulfing millions of Americans who couldn’t stand anything about their president — they couldn’t stand his policies, couldn’t stand his demeanor, couldn’t even stand his looks.
We were witnessing, Krauthammer wrote, “The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush."
Krauthammer dubbed the affliction “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
The brilliance of the joke was underscored by the fact that Krauthammer was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who had specialized in mania before becoming a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post. In other words, he knew of which he spoke.
It’s worth remembering the origin story now that Bush Derangement Syndrome has been largely forgotten, ousted by time and a different but similar strain of the ailment: Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes shortened to TDS.
It’s no laughing matter, according to a psychotherapist writing for The Wall Street Journal.
In his op-ed, Jonathan Alpert asked, “Is Trump Derangement Syndrome real?” He went on to argue that while mental-health professionals would never say yes in the clinical sense, he has patients who talk about Donald Trump in their counseling sessions and exhibit symptoms related to anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders, including insomnia, agitation and impaired functioning.
“One patient told me she couldn’t enjoy a family vacation because ‘it felt wrong to relax while Trump was still out there.’ Others report panic attacks or trouble sleeping after seeing him in the news. Their anxiety has outgrown politics and become a way of being,” Alpert explained.
The Zoomers among us can’t recall it, but most Millennials and Boomers can: the way people felt much the same way during George W. Bush’s presidency, even though his approval rating soared to 90% in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. “I think a lot of people have memory-holed how much the left hated GWB by the end of his second term. It was visceral,” my colleague Suzanne Bates recalls.
Krauthammer’s column captured the mood of the era when he quipped that Bush Derangement Syndrome was “epidemic in New York’s Upper West Side and the tonier parts of Los Angeles, where the very sight of the president — say, smiling while holding a tray of Thanksgiving turkey in a Baghdad mess hall — caused dozens of cases of apoplexy in otherwise healthy adults.”
That was when Bush paid a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving in 2003.
The media, some of whom suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome themselves, triumphantly reported that the turkey in that photograph was a decoration, not the actual meal served to the troops, with some going so far as to say that it was a plastic turkey — a falsehood that Snopes later debunked.
This brings us to a recent poll commissioned by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution which found that “standing up to Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans” is the issue that most matters to Georgia Democrats. Traditional issues for Democrats, like abortion and climate change, barely even registered as cause for concern.
That’s the sort of thing that Republicans point out when they talk about TDS.
But George W. Bush, who was hated so viscerally just 20 years ago, has been trending upward in public opinion polls since his presidency ended. Earlier this year, Gallup reported that GWB is the second most popular living president, after Barack Obama. Bill Maher has walked back some of his criticism of him. And the warm relationship that Bush has with Michelle Obama perhaps has helped to soften any lingering partisan rancor.
Will the animosity toward Trump similarly subside after he leaves office? It’s hard to imagine, but it was hard to imagine Bush’s current stature when he turned over the White House to the Obamas in 2009.
Meanwhile, for anyone reveling in George W. Bush’s resurgence, there are holiday gifts to be had on the website of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, including a pickleball set. (The former president is a fan.)
An apology of note
Tucker Carlson has not had a good month — the latest fallout from his widely condemned interview with Nick Fuentes was the resignation of Princeton’s Robert P. George (a Deseret News contributor) from the board of the Heritage Foundation.
Last week’s Right to the Point called out Carlson for his mean-girl takedown of Liz Cheney on the week her father died. He has since apologized for those remarks, as a Right to the Point reader pointed out to me. (Appearing on stage with Megyn Kelly in White Plains, New York, Carlson said that Dick Cheney had raised a “really repulsive” daughter and went on to say even worse things).
In his apology, Carlson said that he had “slandered Liz Cheney, basically” instead of explaining the reasons why he dislikes her.
“Because we disagree so profoundly ... I told myself, clearly I must have told myself, that you can say anything you want about Liz Cheney. She’s not really human. You can say anything you want, including something really awful and nasty, like ‘If I was her dad, I would kill myself.’
“Who thinks like that? Who talks like that? Well, I did. And so I just want to say I’m sorry to Liz Cheney, and I mean that, too. I mean that. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry I said that. ... There is never an excuse to talk about people like that.”
Unfortunately, in the same monologue, Carlson also said that he has contempt for Cheney, which is not the same thing as “slander, basically” but still not in line with any of the classical virtues, religious or secular, that most of us try to uphold.
Contempt, Arthur Brooks says, is the sum of disgust and anger. And Christianity has a solution for it, according to Brooks, in Jesus’ command to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you.”
“Are you strong enough for that? Are we strong enough for that? Because that’s the medicine we need,” Brooks said.
He added: ”That’s the only thing that’s going to bring our country back together again. And we need people dedicated to do that and do it in public. It’s the only way that we save this enterprise.”
Recommended reading
Meagan Kohler observes that the gap between men and women’s religious observance is closing, and that the reason is not something to celebrate.
“Labor force participation reduced the religious gap between women and men by nearly half, on average. For example, the gap between women and men who pray daily falls from 13% to 7% percentage points among women in the workforce.”
How politics and work are affecting women’s religious practice
Jay Evensen reviews the latest scandals related to sports gambling and considers what Kenesaw Mountain Landis would do.
“As I’ve said before, a league’s credibility is its greatest asset. If it’s lost, a lot of cities and states will be on the hook for tax subsidies provided for stadiums and sports districts that people no longer attend. Regaining respect would be a long, painful process.”
The sports gambling scandals keep multiplying
“How do we keep the cultural norm of marriage when a marriage in our circle falls apart?” asks Naomi Schaefer Riley, responding to new research from the American Enterprise Institute that suggests divorce may be contagious.
“Few want couples who are deeply unhappy to be forced to remain married till death do they part. And we want the people we love to feel as though they have our support if things do go south in their partnerships. But we also want our children to grow up in a world where marriage is the default arrangement for forming a family.”
End notes
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with McKay Coppins, the celebrated writer at The Atlantic who is now co-hosting, with Jane Clayson Johnson, a new podcast called “Deseret Voices.” (You can read about my visit with Coppins here.)
There are two episodes out now, well worth your time. New shows are released on Thursdays on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Deseret News YouTube channel and at Deseret.com/podcasts.
Finally, if you’re donating to a food bank this week to help struggling families with their Thanksgiving meal, consider this tip I got from a friend who regularly makes donations:
Check the instructions on prepackaged meals and mixes and when possible, buy things that only need water. Sometimes, struggling families don’t have oil and eggs on hand. Also, look for cans that have pop-tops and don’t require can openers. Or, as the Rev. Theresa Dear recently advised Deseret readers, consider including a hand-held can opener with your donation. (Pro tip: You can also buy can openers designed to be easier for people with arthritis to use.)
As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.