You still ought to be able to tell one politician from another. Both Bush Sr. and Obama speak English as their native tongue, both spent nearly all of their adult life living in the United States, both have been married once and fathered children, and neither was brought up in the wage earning stratum or lived in it as an adult. Beyond those points (which apply to all but an odd minority of those who have sought the presidency), these two men are quite dissimilar.

There is a great deal of continuity in public policy from one administration to the next (due to inertia more than anything else). That aside, it is difficult to think of particular objects these men have had in common or achievements they have had in common. You certainly do not specify any.

You are free to assert that those who disagree with you should focus on the fantasy Obama you have constructed. But Bush Sr. is so boring for such purposes. It would be better if you said he is “essentially” like Reagan. Talk about how Elena Kagan is “essentially” like Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, but conservatives are too crazy to notice. Talk about how Obama sharply reduced marginal tax rates across-the-board. If you’re going to be disingenuous, make it fun for the reader. I suppose you would have a point about the deficits – though the largest of Reagan’s deficits was substantially smaller as a percentage of GDP than the smallest of Obama’s deficits.

Well, when someone tells the deranged person that the “elephant” in the corner is just a mouse, the fact he thinks they are nuts is not counter-evidence!

And I will note that I am a conservative, whose favorite philosophers are Oakeshott and Voegelin, both of whom I have published a fair amount of material on. So I am not some lefty Obama fanboy with stars in his eyes over the President.

Bush, Sr. did not present budget plans requiring public sector borrowing to the tune of 9% of gross domestic product year after year; Bush, Sr. managed to negotiate compromises with the Congressional leadership of the day; Bush, Sr. had no interest in compelling private institutions to pay for contraception and abortion; Bush Sr. did not propose a Rube Goldberg scheme to restructure the financing of medical care in this country without addressing any of the extant system’s important flaws; Bush, Sr. did not sign into law a Rube Goldberg scheme to amend the regulation of the financial sector without addressing any of the extant system’s important flaws; Bush Sr actually presided over the resolution of the Savings & Loan mess inherited from the previous administration; Bush Sr. did not stick us with Sonia Sotomayer… and so forth.

Gene Callahan, is it better to remain silent and be thought a fool or … oh, you know the rest.

The nicest observation one could about that statement is that IT is bizarre. There is no way Bush Sr. would ever have sought to make people opposed to abortion pay for it, for starters. I suppose you think Taft and Wilson were identical.

It certainly is bizarre. We really have, essentially, Bush Sr. as president again, and Republicans are going bananas as if it is Vladimir Lenin instead.

I haven’t looked at Kesler’s book, but expect that I know how it goes. Lilla’s alternate history allows Democratic moderation to to shift Left by ignoring what it was previously. The moderate Left of the Nixon era or of the Reagan era would be shocked at what happened to their party, even if it has been a natural progression.