E.G.

Around the blogosphere today, people are discussing the following remark by Bush:

"…I don’t see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord," he said.

(text lifted from Left2Right)

It’s interesting to notice the difference in tone between Andrew Sullivan’s post on this remark and Herzog’s at Left2Right. 

Herzog’s post is mildly critical of Bush.  But Herzog leaves open the possibility that, in seeming to claim that one must be Christian in order to qualify to be president, Bush is only offering a "private or personal reflection" on his own experience as president.  Herzog says that if that’s the case, then he has "no objection" to Bush’s remark. 

On the other hand, Sullivan’s post is far less generous to Bush.  Sullivan considers only one interpretation of Bush’s claim, according to which Bush means to say that the White House is for "Christians only," and demands that Bush retract the statement.  Sullivan seems really outraged; Herzog seems just tentatively disturbed.

This difference, I think, illustrates a general point: Claiming to be a liberal saps your credibility among conservatives and forces you to hedge, qualify and apologize in order to get conservatives to listen to you at all.  This is why I think Andrew Sullivan, as well as a few other self-identified "conservatives," is in a position to do a far better job of carrying "liberal" or "left-leaning" ideas to the right than the folks at Left2Right have been able to do thus far.