Oppositionitis: The Compassionate View of a Former Sufferer

First the election, then the inaugural festivities.  Dr. Potomac finally feels in fit enough shape to ply the blogging trade once again. 

He makes just one observation:  the Democrats have finally entered the terminal phase of oppositionitis, a disease with which he is directly and personally familiar.  It goes something like this:  you belong to a political party that has been consigned to a marginal position for a prolonged period.  In Dr. Potomac's case it was, how the Manolo would say, the Adminstration of the Clinton.  One is so deeply disturbed by the continuous flow of disagreeable policy decisions (say, mandatory child safety seats for everyone under the age of 23) that a certain unhinging occurs.  The next Democratic policy recommendation could be sainthood for Reagan or a commemorative resolution declaring apple pie delicious or, to update the phenomenon, a presidential address declaring that freedom is the natural condition of man.  Couldn't make the slightest difference what the proposal is, the other guy made it up and it is simply and genetically WRONG and requires a hyperbolic denunciation.  (Note:  Barbara Boxer [Empty Suit, CA] is the Typhoid Mary of Democratic oppositionitis.  When Saturday Night Live starts ridiculing a Democrat, he or she should know she's in deep trouble.)

Oppositionitis is an ugly and, worse, self-perpetuating problem.  It leads one to say patently absurd things and cause the public to look away in embarrassment.  It is extremism in 40-point font.  President Bush presses on with democracy for Iraq with what looks like rather fulsome support of the overwhelming majority of Iraqi citizens:  wrong.  Nominates the superb Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State:  wrong.  Tries to pull the emergency brake on the upcoming Social Security trainwreck:  wrong.  Suggests that poor Americans might be better off owning rather than renting the American dream:  wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, it has to be wrong because...George Bush said it.

The current state of Democratic politics is Newt Gingrich post-government shutdown.  Bill Clinton's intricate, lying presidency drove the GOP into advanced oppositionitis and the public consigned the Republican majority in Congress to the loony bin.  And now, dear, dear, Democrats, you've contracted the same disabling disease.  Let's assume for the sake of argument that George Bush is a drooling idiot.  Karl Rove, by consensus, is still the all-knowing, all-seeing superintendent of the asylum and not a word passes out of POTUS' mouth without having been thoroughly focus-grouped for maximum effect.  Even under their own Bush-is-an-idiot construct, what are the odds that the Democrats can oppose EVERYTHING without making a political error on enough of these items to damage themselves seriously?  Answer:  not good.  In fact, it probably means that GWB will slowly bury the opposition under a trickle of popular, common sense policy changes that are gradually reshaping American society.

Oppositionitis.  You heard it hear first.  It needs a disease group to advocate for research funding