Barack W. Bush?

My wife howled with laughter this morning, reading Paul Burka's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, United We Fall. After reading it myself, I saw the fallacious premise that tickled her so. Burka was stuggling - and understandably so - to make an analogy between Barack Obama and George W. Bush. That was laughable enough, but try this one on from Burka:

"Just as Mr. Bush’s message of compassionate conservatism appealed to many Democrats and independent-minded liberals, Mr. Obama’s politics of hope seems to disarm Republicans and rightward-leaning independents."

I don't know a liberal who was ever impressed with Bush the younger, whether before the campaign or since the debacle in Iraq. The popular votes in the 2000 and 2004 elections indicate some Democrats and Independents indeed voted for Bush, but these were not liberals, who have disliked Bush and his father for a long time now.

The rest of the story collapses in on itself from the weight of this less-than-flimsy premise, exposing the piece as an example of extreme cynicism: that someone trying to appeal to our better selves is somehow taking us for a ride, just like Bush has. We surely need skepticism in today's world, but there's no evidence of this kind of dastardliness in Obama and Burka doesn't even attempt to provide any. Just because it's an opinion piece doesn't mean you can stretch the truth to fit your hypothesis.

Obama like Bush? That is a laugh.