The point here is not that Mr. Bush has a flawless or even a good record or that his critics don't have their points. The point is that, at this stage in his presidency, Mr. Bush cannot credibly be described as some kind of world-historical disaster on a par with James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover, nor can he credibly be accused of the things of which he is accused. This brings us to our second hypothesis, which is that his critics are insane.

This is an easier case to make. Mr. Blumenthal, for instance, is the man who described Bill Clinton's presidency as the most consequential, the most inspiring and the most moral of the 20th century, only possibly excepting FDR's. Mr. Krugman spent his first couple of years as a columnist writing tirades about how the U.S. economy was on the point of Argentina-style collapse.

What makes these arguments insane--I use the word advisedly--isn't that they don't contain some possible germ of truth. One can argue that Mr. Clinton was a reasonably good president. And one can argue that Bush economic policy has not been a success. But you have to be insane to argue that Mr. Clinton was FDR incarnate, and you have to be insane to argue Mr. Bush has brought the U.S. to its lowest economic point since 1932. This style of hyperbole is a symptom of madness, because it displays such palpable disconnect from observable reality. If you have to go looking for outrage, the outrage probably isn't there. That which is truly outrageous tends to have the quality of obviousness.

So here is one aspect of this insanity: no sense of proportion. For Mr. Blumenthal, Fallujah isn't merely like Stalingrad. It may as well be Stalingrad, just as Guantanamo may as well be Lefertovo and Abu Ghraib may as well be Buchenwald, and Mr. Bush may as well be Hitler and Hoover combined, and Iraq may as well be Vietnam and Bill Clinton may as well be Franklin Roosevelt. The absence of proportion stems, in turn, from a problem of perspective. If you have no idea where you stand in relation to certain objects, then an elephant may seem as small as a fly and a fly may seem as large as an elephant. Similarly, Mr. Blumenthal can compare the American detention infrastructure to the Gulag archipelago only if he has no concept of the actual size of things. And he can have no concept of the size of things because he neither knows enough about them nor where he stands in relation to them. What is the vantage point from which Mr. Blumenthal observes the world? It is one where Fallujah is "Stalingrad-like." How does one manage to see the world this way? By standing too close to Fallujah and too far from Stalingrad. By being consumed by the present. By losing not just the sense, but the possibility, of judgment.

Care for language is more than a concern for purity. When one describes President Bush as a fascist, what words remain for real fascists? When one describes Fallujah as Stalingrad-like, how can we express, in the words that remain to the language, what Stalingrad was like? George Orwell wrote that the English language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." In taking care with language, we take care of ourselves.