Criminal, uneducated, and/or foreign - OR - simply brainwashed, products of a government education system that indoctrinates instead of educates, or they are opportunistic and/or addicted to free stuff courtesy of the taxpayer. And throw into that mix a few honest idealistic ideologues who truly believe that the liberal way is the noble high road.
But none are willing to closely scrutinize the results or progress or unintended consequences of what their heroes do.
I detested Nixon, followed Woodstein religiously through the end of high school and into college. By that time, I was fairly conservative which didn't matter.
I'd read
Nixon Agonistes in early high school and while I recognized the personal bias of Wills, I also saw the complexity of Nixon, including his very dark side. Once that happened, it was inevitable that I'd see the problems with Watergate and the cover-up.
Since 2008, seen the same with Obama, after reading his autobiographies. The man is complex, granted. He's not nearly as smart and certainly not self-aware as one would think, with two autobiographies under his belt.
I can't say I detested Nixon though I had not been converted away from the Democratic Party at that time, and I did not vote for him. In retrospect, I can now see that he was left of JFK, and there are components of his administration I can neither justify or defend on any basis, but I can also appreciate the flashes of brilliance that were there and acknowledge the things he got right and did well. Like Obama he inherited a highly unpopular war, a deepening recession with stagflation, and also a far more precarious international dynamic than what Obama has had to deal with.
Few people know that Nixon's No. 1 priority was to usher in a "New generation of peace" and accomplished a number of things toward that goal. Unfortunately, like some of his predecessors, he wasn't above turning the Constitution on its head to get some things done and he did some damage in that process. But even resigning in disgrace cannot take away from him some accomplishment he can point to with pride.
So far, Obama doesn't have much to point to with pride. But it's hard to get things done when you don't know anything about anything, when nobody tells you anything about anything, when you are out of every loop of anything that even potentially includes a problem.