Columnist Robert Samuelson’s thought that the hatred of President Bush is based on a reaction to his success and probable re-election is not right in my case (Commentary, Jan. 2). I will confess to disliking Bush intensely. He is one of the most tenuously elected presidents of all time, and yet acts as if he were elected by a landslide.
Early on he exhibited his penchant for secrecy in government and his concern for the well being of the rich at the expense of all others. It was then, in the early months of his presidency, that I got the gut feeling that he was the worst president of my lifetime (I was born in 1932). That conviction has intensified with his every act (except his cut off of the telemarketers, which is surprising since it is a regulation of a business).
The worst thing that has happened to me during the Bush administration is that for the first time in my life, I do not trust my government. Always before, Democrat or Republican, I looked upon the government as representing the values for which I basically stood. I feel that Bush has given the country to the hands of the rich at the expense of the well-being and safety of the rest of us; he has turned us over to the religious fanatics, who control our health policies on the basis of arcane theologies as opposed to science and human decency; he has based his governing rationale on the neo-conservative political ideology, which is anchored in elitism . Finally, he has based his foreign policy on unilateralism, another neo-conservative idea, to the detriment of the international community.
All of this I consider alien to basic American values. I find very little to like in Bush. Whenever people in positions of power are disliked, their apologists’ first thought is to attribute the dislike to jealousy, envy or some other irrational motive, as Samuelson does in his commentary. They never think to examine their own actions.
