Failed president? well, most people as the get older the mellow a little bit. get a little less judgment. you ve gotten more black and white, carl. kennedy could do no wrong and bush could do no right. kennedy did a lot wrong. and bush was great in africa. absolutely great. fabulous. i agree with that. he s now spending a lot of time on that. he ace real human teitarian. i don t think there s any question when historians look back george w. bush will be on the lower rungs of president. but i think he deserves some credit with a hyperpolarization he s kept his mouth shut about his successor. i think he s dealt with that with a grace that s very characteristic of the bush family. i think he made some serious errors, grievous misjudgements that for which his presidency is always going to be scorned in many ways by historians.
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that mesmerizing 2004 democratic convention speech transformed barack obama from relative obscurity to a national star. in bipartisan or post partisan theme helped him stun hillary clinton and lift him to the white house, and then he met an opposition party that had no interest in across the aisle work. on and on. it s been won confrontation after another, government funding, the debt ceiling, you name it. and it s been matched with overheat party rhetoric. the question is if the experience of the past four plus years of watching barack obama inspire the nation with post partisan rhetoric and then watching washington descend into a state of hyperpolarization anyway has soured the country on the idea of post-partisanship.
Justice kennedy did there. adam, to my understanding, the supreme court justices are not supposed to be politicized, but it seems like we have a mini senate that s divided 5-4, so many of the ruling fall along those conservative, liberal lines. is that because an outgrowth of hyperpolarization in politics leads to that? is that the reason why we have that? is that hurting the process with the court? well, it s possible to overstate it. remember, only about 20% of the cases are 5-4. not all of them spin out ideologically. the biggest ones do tend to. these days, for the first time in decades, it also splits along the lines of which president appointed which justice. all of the five more conservative justices were appointed by republican presidents. all of the five more liberal ones by democrats. that gives rise to the feeling among some that the court is politicized. so adam, let me pick up on what you were just telling jonathan. sometimes there s a conversation between the court
Right in that they want to watch their tone. republicans don t want to be calling for impeachment right now. it perhaps is a bit too far and extreme. however, what i think is going to be interesting to watch is over the next couple of weeks, if they are able to link this irs scandal to their longer narrative about obamacare, already we re seeing reports that the irs will, in fact, be part of implementing a controversial obamacare. it s going to be interesting to see how that plays out. former republican bob dole was on fox this morning. he said his own party was not in great shape. this is some advice that he had for republicans. i think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says, closed for repairs. closed for repairs. 89-year-old bob dole there, we should note, talking about the hyperpolarization that members of the gop are displaying right now in his opinion. who in the republican party, benny, is working on remedying that right now?