The Bush Administration, and particularly Bush's chief political strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, have been expert in both galvanizing and mobilizing the fears and resentments of people. A good part of their politics consists of being against others who are defined in stereotypical terms. These others don't, in actual reality, exist. The so-called Democratic elitists, for example, are a stereotype who they can hate. Anyone who watches Fox News or listens to Rush Limbaugh knows that this hatred of the other is at the core of their politics.

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.

George W. Bush has exhibited hostility to science that no other president has ever displayed.

Clinton was very early on aware of the problem of international terrorism.

It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.

The conservative argument is that the economy is like the weather, that it just operates automatically.

In every single case, the truth is that the atmosphere created by the Iraq invasion and the staggeringly mismanaged occupation has incited terrorists to act. It's been a contributing factor. It's unavoidable throughout Europe - in Spain, in Germany, in Britain. The truth is that we need long-term American policy to shift in order to really soak up and get rid of these sources of terrorism that threaten our Western allies.