Re pathology, it should be remembered that before Krauthammer became a columnist, he was a practising psychologist. The democrats are indulging themselves in an obsessive hatred that has nothing rational about it. As to its causes, I think it is not so much Bush personally, who only serves as the focal point of the mania, as it is the appearance that events in the world are piling up in such a way as to discredit all their assumptions about the human condition. Thus their sense of personal identity is threatened.