The liberal media is scared of the visionary in Bush, writes Susan Philips.
The American visitor was about 30, a financial journalist, and she was making a brief visit to Ireland. Happy to air her views, she palpably welcomed the "B" question.
"I hate Bush for three reasons," she began, emphasising the word hate. "The first reason I hate him is for his social policies, or lack of them; the second is for his abysmal foreign policy and the third reason I hate him is for the absolute mess he has made of our economy.
"In fact, I think Bush's policies rank him among the worst presidents in US history." The room hung on her every word.
What causes such Bush hatred, and why does this philosophy find such a ready reception in Ireland, not only among academics and politicians but with just about anyone who has an opinion on anything?
To be sure, Europeans never had much time for conservative republicanism, and Ireland would see itself part of the European social democratic consensus. And our strongly liberal and left-of-centre media find a deeply comforting home within the US Democratic ideal, and it is these commentators, far more than politicians, who help form opinion and who lead the chase to see Bush removed.
Our understanding of remote events is an experience largely mediated by the institutions of mass communication. This one-way flow of messages has a profound impact on our understanding of world affairs and if, for example, the purveyor has strong anti-Bush feelings and believes his audience to be similarly imbued, an anti-Bush bias will surely creep in.
How, otherwise, can the outright rudeness of Carole Coleman interviewing Mr Bush this summer be explained? Or her recent world report on the Republican convention where she focused on Bush's dog and twins and chose to ignore innovative Republican social policies? Could the liberal distaste of the words "God" and "the unborn" embedded in Bush's speech have ensured that satire was the preferred response?
And how could any reasonable person explain the air-time afforded by RTÉ this summer to former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke, that old Bush-hater and supporter of all US opponents from Libya to Nicaragua?
So why does Bush-hatred and media bias go so much further than normal political contempt?
Firstly, Bush provokes us into the uncomfortable realm of absolutes. Words like hope and dignity, good and evil flow easily off his tongue, like in his Madison Square acceptance speech: "We are the greatest force for good." But such words demand explanations. What is the meaning of good? To Bush it is rooted in his form of absolute truth which rests on his fundamentalist belief in Judaeo-Christian biblical principles, and these words carry a moral implication.
Such interpretations are an anathema to postmodernists, who prefer to define their own standards of morality and truths on the basis of a secular concept of life. If Bush's version of good happens to be true, then, by definition, we are faced with wondering what is bad. In a world of changing moral absolutes, this makes us prickly.
It is this use of absolutes which makes Bush's foreign policy so annoying to liberals. The destruction which tore the heart out of New York was seen in black and white terms by the US administration as rampaging Islamic terrorism in need of a swift and deadly response. Evil versus good. Others saw the attack as an almost justifiably-provoked response to US world policy and blamed Bush.
And on Iraq, neutral Ireland puts on its mantle of moral authority, and joins the idealistic appeasement lobby calling for Bush to take a more softly, softly approach to military tactics which it sees as responsible for the continued bloodshed.
And Bush supports Israel, calling it the only democracy in the Middle East and the rightful home of the Jewish people, infuriating those comfortable with a victim mentality and who accept at face value what the press tells them about Israeli aggression.
As a realist, Bush provokes us away from the art of fence-sitting, and so we become polarised. For or against; it demands a response.
Those who identify with his Judaeo-Christian belief of good and evil see George W. Bush as a visionary, a man ahead of his time, to be supported absolutely. Liberals, meanwhile, look for additional, if less substantive, reasons to vent their ire. They develop a viscerally hostile reaction and near pathological loathing of his rather stammering speech, his flexed shoulders and splayed-out elbows. If he is so defunct, they reason, he must be deserving of their rage.
For the Bush-haters on both sides of the Atlantic, November looms large and here in Ireland the media will continue to present the case for Kerry. But Bush will win.
Susan Philips was an Independent Wicklow county councillor for 14 years and has an MA in Politics