Bush didn't want to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, a nonpartisan leader who unified the country without being much help to his party. Ticket splitting began in a big way during the 1950s when millions of Democrats went for Ike but stuck with their party on the rest of the ballot. Bush wanted to realign the country and create a Republican majority for bold conservative policies at home and abroad.

And so, even as he was shoveling money out the door for national defense and new engagements abroad, Bush went for more tax cuts for the wealthy. He moved from Afghanistan to Iraq and ridiculed Democrats who held off on full endorsement of the war against Saddam Hussein pending strong United Nations support. In September 2002, shortly before the midterm elections, Bush mocked such Democrats as saying, according to Bush: "Oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I'm going to wait for somebody else to act."

And just before the elections, Bush went after Democrats for their stand on the homeland security bill, turning the very ground on which bipartisanship had been built into an electoral battlefield.

Republicans won in 2002, but Bush lost most Democrats forever. Conservative critics of "Bush hatred" like to argue that opposition to the president is a weird psychological affliction. It is nothing of the sort. It is a rational response to getting burned. They are, as a friend once put it, biting the hand that slapped them in the face.