Klein gets shrill

April 6, 2007

About a month ago, Time’s Joe Klein was railing against “left-wing extremists.” In this week’s column, Klein seems to have come to the conclusion that these same extremists are right about the president.

The three big Bush stories of 2007–the decision to “surge” in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons–precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys). […]

When Bush came to office — installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore — I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I’ve tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration–arrogance, incompetence, cynicism–are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Now, as many of you know, Klein’s relationship with the liberal blog community has been, shall we say, “strained.” Klein tends to believe that the netroots are smug and arrogant amateurs, while Klein’s critics tend to see him as, well, a “wanker.”

With this background in mind, it’s tempting to contrast today’s column with previous pieces Klein has written, or ask Klein why he’s criticized others who’ve offered similar critiques of Bush in the past.

But I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to graciously congratulate Klein, welcome him to the reality-based community, and ask him what in the world took him so long.

Klein notes the “epic collapse of the Bush administration.” That’s certainly accurate, and I’m hesitant to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but didn’t the collapse begin in earnest quite a while ago?

“Arrogance, incompetence, and cynicism” are the bedrock traits of Bush’s presidency, but didn’t we know this several years ago?

I also can’t help but wonder what the nation is supposed to do about all of this.

Posting his column tonight on the Time blog Swampland, Klein notes that despite not being able to imagine two more years with an “unfit” president: “NO! I am not hinting at impeachment. There are no ‘high crimes’ here. Just a really bad presidency. In fact, I consider impeachment talk counterproductive and slightly nutso.”

The relative merits of impeachment are debatable, but it raises an awkward problem. We have a president “clearly unfit to lead.” By Klein’s telling, Bush is “indifferent to reality in Iraq”; he has a demonstrated “inability to provide our troops ‘what they need'”; and his political operation “corrupted” a variety of policy areas, including national security, “that should be off-limits to political operators.”

I agree with all of this, and I’m not criticizing Klein for coming to the same conclusions with which I wholeheartedly agree.

But I’m curious: what would Klein have us to in the face of disaster? Run out the clock and pray that Bush doesn’t make things too much worse?

Maybe he can tackle this in next week’s column.

Joe Klein is such a tool.

Bush wasn’t “installed by the Supreme Court.” He was installed by Congress, which refused to disallow the hopelessly ambiguous results from Florida. (They did have that option, after all.)

  • I challenge each and every one of you to be able to express his or her opinions intelligently, without insults. When you use insults and insulting language, you demean your own causes and cheapen your voices value to the movements you support. Free speech you desire and the goals you hope to achieve cannot be obtained if people disregard you because you sound like ignorant, petulant children. Many points I have read here and elsewhere in this blog site have had good points, but those points are lost on conservatives who come here to try to understand your outrage or concern, when the read you throwing childish taunts and insults about. I defended your right to say as you wish with my life for 22 years, and made many many sacrifices for you to be able to say as you wish, others died to do the same. Honor them and argue intelligently, use reason and facts, not taunts and insults. Politics and activism should not look like a Jerry Springer episode. Rise up and be adults, make the other side the ones who look unreasonable and irrational, that’s the first step to winning debates.
    Joe McLaughlin

  • So Joe – Do you go around to conservative sites and give the same lecture? – why don’t you post some links of where you have, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a conservative site where liberals or anything other than strictest adherence to the Bush line hasn’t been treated with the derision and contempt. Stuff on here is mild in comparison. The door swings both ways, you know…

  • My opinion of Klein used to be that he was a Mickey Kaus type of liberal – someone who is far happier undermining other liberals than advancing the liberal agenda. The “Am not a liberal but I play one for Time magazine” kind of liberal. When he first started blogging on Swampland, it seemed to be more of the same and he got his head handed to him a number of times by the liberal blogs. Now, he seems to be realizing the stupidity of undermining other liberals and the importance of attacking Bush’s policies. I am guessing that defending your ideas on a blog produces much different thinking that defending your ideas at the Washington cocktail party circuit.

  • Newsflash for Joe: Sun rises in east! Be the first member of the Kommentariat to make note of this!

    He’s still a bloody wanker and is nowhere near living inside the reality-based community.

    Hey Joe: why don’t you go back on Hugh Hewitt’s show and attack some more Democrats, you fucking traitor?

    Please accept an invitation to be Guest of Honor at a single-car fatality, you moron. Do the world a favor.

  • the three defining sins of the Bush Administration–arrogance, incompetence, cynicism–are congenital: they’re part of his personality

    Do you think Joe will finally get to the point that he realizes that this isn’t just limited to Bush or his administration? He’s describing the entire Republican Party going back for over a decade. That’s not to say that every Republican is an arrogant, incompentent, cynic; because they’re not. But taken as a whole, that’s the best way to describe them. This isn’t just about a lousy president. Their entire system has been screwed-up for years.

    And the more people realize that, the more Beltway “centrism” looks like the silly joke it always was. Compromise if we must, but it should never have been the default position. And now that I think about it, doesn’t “arrogance, incompetence, and cynicism” also describe the Beltway centrists?

  • I entirely agree with Joe McL. And no, it isn’t my business to go to conservative blogs and teach them manners. In fact, their unmannered stupidity is such a pleasant weapon to use against them that I wouldn’t if I could.
    I just think we don’t need this, for the simple reason that we have a much stronger weapon to use than puerile name-calling. We happen to be right — and people are beginning to notice that we are and have been right along. (See the Klein column that spurred this post.)

  • Sure he’s shrill. Look at it as the over-entheusiasm of a new convert. So it took him years to figure out what the bloggers he disdains realized years ago. At least he finally gets it.

  • Nope, still a wanker. His latest comment on the Time blog basically states how he dreads Hilary becoming president because we’ll have to listen to all the anti-Clinton wingnut howling 24-7, again. Poor Joe. I sympathize with him. Question to Joe: Who the bleep do you think enabled eight years of that crap in the 1990’s?

  • Joe McL:

    I agree that in general, reasoned, insult-free discussion and argument is the way to go. However, I reserve the right to call someone an asshole when they do the same to me, and I reserve the right to treat the destruction of our system of government by the current administration with the contempt (and profanity) it deserves.

    On the first group, take Ann (harpy) Coulter: She’s basically called me a traitor to my country, for being a liberal (as have many members of the administration). Should I just say, “Gosh, you’re free to have that opinion, but I respectfully disagree”? Personally, I feel that such a response even gives credence to her ‘argument’, because it leaves people the impression that I don’t really care about being called a traitor. My (proper) response is to say, “Fuck you, you psycho dominatrix stick figure whorebag.” (This is the clean version; there’s so much wrong with Coulter, addressing it all in a single breath is difficult.)

    I have a similar view about the administration and its various jerks. I care deeply about how badly they’ve undeniably screwed up the country and our system of government, and much of the time the only way to properly express my outrage is to swear like a motherfucker at them. At the very least, I want people to know that I’m really, really, really pissed off at the current state of affairs. I find it amusing that conservatives, who claim that liberals don’t care about their country, get all upset and bothered when we show some emotion and anger at its destruction.

  • well put, gg…..very well put. no one should expect us to respect those who don’t deserve any respect.

  • One more nit to pick with Klein. I think the NSA wiretapping case is clearly within the realm of high crimes and misdemeanors. The defendant may be able to beat the charge at trial in the Senate but there is certainly probable cause to make an arrest in the House.

    Secondly, who says “a really bad presidency” is not an impeachable offense? High crimes and misdemeanors are not defined in the Constitution. They are whatever Congress says they are. It’s an entirely political decision. The general definition of misdeanor at the time of the Founding just meant generally bad behavior.

    But the Bush presidency really points out the need for some other constitutional mechanism for “the world’s greatest democracy” to remove a leader the people have lost faith in. This would be some flavor of a no confidence vote in the Congress.

    The remedy should be a national referendum as quickly as logistically possible (90 days?) in which the President stands against a member of the opposition party. In other words, something similar to that aspect of the parliamentary system grafted onto our system.

  • Joe McLaughlin @ 2 makes a good point. In response to a comment earlier in the week about correcting some conservative misrepresentation of facts, I went looking for a conservative blog to comment on. Couldn’t find one. After suffering 20 minutes of elevated blood pressure from recognizing myself as the object of their vile derision, I decided it wasn’t worth it.

    We all get emotional because we’re passionate and often frustrated, but too much vitriol is a turn off for someone who comes here looking for rational discussion.

  • I’ve read a good many of Klein’s columns; most of them are little more than attacks on people who, for a variety of reasons, choose not to agree with him. Anyone who refused to buy into the Klein vision of this administration were summarily labelled “extremists, whackos, and unpatriotic.”

    Neither I, nor any member of the Liberal/Progressive community-at-large, held a gun to Mr. Klein’s head and “forced” him to take the side he took. He chose the course, and he continued to “stay the course” when simple, common sense identified that it was not the course to be taken.

    Joe Klein jumped on a bandwagon—as did a good many other columnists, bloggers, and journalists. They are beginning to discover that their “bandwagon” is, in reality, little more than a leaky boat. There are no lifeboats; there are no flotation devices; there is only the option to jump ship, or to stay on until the bitter end.

    It must be remembered that, no matter how sincere these myriad political epiphanies may seem, the individuals who are now proclaiming to see the light of day were, until quite recently, rejecting the very notion of that light’s existence. A great many refused, on an almost-daily basis, to even contemplate the idea of “but what if you’re wrong about Bush?”

    They defended both Abu Graib and Abu Gonzo; they defended the gargantuan mismanagement of Katrina and the continued existence of Gitmo; they fell in line to defend a leader who is “clearly unfit to lead.”

    “No high crimes,” sayeth The Klein?

    This nation was taken to war on intentionally-manipulated intelligence. Untold billions have been squandered on “questionable” reconstruction programs, defective materiel, politicized quartermastering and supply, insufficient training and downtime for refit—all of which may well constitute the “high crimes” of murder, embezzlement, theft, fraud, and—yes, I believe the word is just as applicable today as I believed four years ago—treason.

    Domestically, one might ask: Where are the billions that were allocated to USDA/HUD housing programs, Medicare benefits for children, the federal school lunch programs, Katrina recovery, and Red Cross emergency response systems? People who qualified for Rural Development Housing loans in 2006 are still waiting for their funding, while the AG-SEC touts massive funding availability to faith-based groups. Most of what was destroyed in NO—in 2005—are still seen, not as new homes, but as tristed piles of smashed lumber, fractured bricks, and mold-infested scraps of plaster.

    The dikes and levees are still not adequately repaired to pre-Katrina levels.

    Where is the crash effort to develop an alternative to this nations “addiction to oil?”

    I’ll accept that Mr. Klein, and all those others like him who are now “seeing the light,” are legitimate in their penance when they can explainfactually, and in detail—to the nation-at-large why they chose to bury their heads in the sand for so many years.

    Otherwise, they’re little different from those citizens of WW-II Germany who suddenly adopted the quip “Nicht Nazi”—when the Russian tanks rolled into Berlin.

    Remember—just because an alcoholic leaves the bar when it closes for the night, does not mean that the alcoholic wants to get sober….

  • Regarding Klein and his editorial, let’s back off a bit and have a good look at ourselves. We — and I include myself — spend much time expressing frustration that Republicans, conservatives, and apathetics just “don’t get” the magnitude of the Bush disaster. We rave about people living outside the reality-based world, and endlessly complain that they don’t “see the light” — our light.

    I happen to think “our light” is correct. But when someone like Klein comes along and voices our line, he gets trashed. Sure, many of these folks have a history of not precisely agreeing with our opinions (or worse), but why discourage them?

    The Bush administration is coming apart piece by piece because pundits who have supported or, at least given Bush more slack than he ever deserved, along with the changing minds of people who voted for him, are having an impact.

    To me, it seems we contradict ourselves in these cases. If Sean Hannity suddenly announced that Bush is an ass, I’d cheer him rather than dismiss him for his mouth-foaming past.

  • For my part, I used the word “tool” ironically. Ordinarily, I strive for arguments that are free of insults. In this case, I was agreeing with Klein that Bush’s election was irregular, while nitpicking one point. Thus, I magnified the nitpick into a major disagreement, for humorous effect.

  • PS: My “seeing the light” comment was not based on Steve’s post. I wrote it before I read his post. And Steve is correct, I think. I’d just rather take what I can get in the global war on Bush.

  • Thank you, Joe McLaughlin, for reminding us of the need for decorum. When the administration regularly insults the intelligence of the people by repeatedly making statements that have been previously disproven (as Cheney did yet again yesterday), it is all to easy to respond emotionally. When one has had one’s political and religious beliefs regularly belittled by the administration, it is so easy to respond defensively. When the administration’s supporters have regularly called for you and yours to be imprisoned, shot, or tortured, and multiple violations of your rights under the Constitution are called necessary, and you are told to shut up about it, it is an all-too-human failing to feel fear, and for that fear to lead to, shall we say, excess in argumentation. When, after years of arguing using reason and fact, one has seen the brutalization and looting of one’s nation by those who ignore facts and show utter contempt for reason, it is so tempting to succumb to the occassional vituperation.

    God bless you, Joe McLaughlin, for reminding us that, should we give in to those human temptations, we might be responsible for offending someone’s delicate sensibilities.

    Heaven forfend.

  • I defended your right to say as you wish with my life for 22 years, and made many many sacrifices for you to be able to say as you wish, others died to do the same. Honor them and argue intelligently, use reason and facts, not taunts and insults. Politics and activism should not look like a Jerry Springer episode. Rise up and be adults…….

    Where to begin? Mr. McLaughlin, none of us ever asked you to put your life on the line for our sake. That was a choice that you made on your own. More to the point, sir, you have the same rights as a citizen as I do. This means that you were fighting for your rights primarily. Your statement would have more meaning if you had put your choice in the proper context, i.e., you “defended with your life” our rights under the Constitution. Furthermore, the defense of a right and the exercise of that right are intimately related. The expression of the minority point of view is the defense of that view as it is the defense of the right to express that view in the first place.

    Your assertion that using vulgar or colorful language when expressing a point of view somehow degrades that point of view and the person expressing said point of view is a specious argument. For example, if I list chapter of verse of the mendacity and corruption of Dick Cheney and also refer to him as a draft-dodging jerk and fucking asshole, these two highly sarcastic and descriptive references in no way degrade me or the facts of my exposition. I am an informed adult and when I use sarcastic expressions of contempt to express my justified antipathy toward various individuals I do not suddenly become a petulant and unruly child. Your assertion to the contrary is simply your attempt to define debate on your terms, an attempt that I reject, as it is an attempt to degrade both the point of view and the speaker of same. Phony sanctimony does not cut it on this website, Mr. McLaughlin.

    The fact that politics does indeed resemble “a Jerry Springer episode” does not take away from either politics or Jerry Springer. As the saying goes, “politics ain’t beanbag” and if you would rather not strap on a cup and defend your viewpoints then politics and by extension political blogs are probably not the place for you.

    Mr. McLaughlin, you will earn a bit of respect around here when you start holding up mouthy turds such as O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Savage as models of inappropriate discourse.

  • It’s rather difficult to imagine how the snot-nosed spoiled offspring of Katrina Babs and Bobble-Head Bush could be anything other than arrogant, incompetent and cynical. What I can’t imagine is how a nation, armed with a Constitution which envisions impeachment, saddled with the Bush Crime Family, cannot bring itself to use the impeachment provision. If it isn’t used in this instance it should simply be torn up and replaced with an agreement that rich Republicans, by Divine Right, are and deserve to be above the law.

  • “Mr. McLaughlin, you will earn a bit of respect around here when you start holding up mouthy turds such as O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Savage as models of inappropriate discourse.” — Timpanist @ 21

    Nothing personal, but taken out of context, one might think that using a term like “mouthy turds” would make one a “mouthy turd.” It may not be true, but at least that’s what such language would suggest.

    Aside from that, the term tells me nothing about the real nature of Hannity, Beck, et.al. So, “using vulgar or colorful language when expressing a point of view somehow degrades that point of view and the person expressing said point of view” does seem to be true.

  • Joe McLaughlin’s post raises an interesting question about the nature and purpose of sites like Carpetbagger: aside from blowing off work for a few minutes at a pop, are we here to vent, to hone arguments, to inform ourselves, or for some other purpose?

    I mean, the answer obviously is “all of the above.” But an outside reader who’s impartial likely will have different reactions to, say, Ed Stephan’s style than Zeitgeist’s; Tom Cleaver’s than beep52’s.

    Venting has its place–and in this period, with this nightmare of an administration, it’s probably crucial to maintaining some sanity, especially if you’re lacking family or friends with which to vent in the real world. I’m fine with the conclusion that if it skeeves some visitors, so be it, but I think McL’s point that it does so is a fair one, worth considering.

    As for that other Joe, Mr. Klein, I wonder if a guy like that–an Old Media Whore to the core, who probably hates this whole Internet thingy because it brings him down from the mountaintop–was later to the party of recognizing Bush’s disastrous, tragic “leadership” style just out of pique at those mean ol’ liberal bloggers. That’s a human reaction, I guess, but it certainly doesn’t speak well of the man or his work.

  • I’ll put my rather lengthy post from earlier into a simple, easy-to-grasp context:

    Joe Klein, and many others like him, appear to be demonstrating a form of “reality-based” thinking. It is, however, something that we might refer to as a “foul-weather reality” in which he—and others like him—are willing to seek any port in the storm, just to escape the storm itself.

    My greater concern is—and it’s a concern that’s reality-based, in my humble opinion—is whether Mr. Klein and others who are “seeing the light” will continue to demonstrate their “improved vision”—if the tides and fates again turn in Bush’s favor.

    Quite simply put, there needs to be more than mere “words” here—there needs to be some serious bridge-burning between Mr. Klein and the current administration….

  • A follow up on the ‘side thread’ on civility that has come up due to McL’s comment:

    First, as many have already pointed out, the leading blog voices on the left such as TCR are quite civil and rational in their posts. Contrasting them with the shriekers on the right such as O’Reilly, Hannity and Coulter, it seems somewhat silly to argue that a few angry commenters are somehow discrediting the left or destroying civil discourse.

    Second, some have argued that bad language and rude discussions can be a ‘turn off’ for the undecided, neutral reader (if such a person exists any more). I agree with this at the extreme, but I think that the opposite is often true. Most ‘undecided’ people out there aren’t going to be swayed by calm policy discussions (look at CSPAN’s ratings) but also need to see the passion that goes along with our beliefs, be it enthusiasm for good policy or outrage at bad policy. I myself only got interested in politics once I saw that rational, intelligent people were really, really upset about something (Al Franken did it for me).

    Finally, and this comes back to the Klein post, this irrational requirement for ‘civility’ in the face of utter horror is part of the problem with the mainstream media, in my opinion. They’ve been conditioned so much to be polite and not ‘rock the boat’ that even when a politician is obviously flat-out lying they don’t criticize. This is part of the ‘work the refs’ strategy that the right has been doing for so long. Nobody is allowed to harshly criticize the right’s policies, because that would be ‘rude’, but the right can scream at the top of their lungs about how horrible the left is. To the mythical unbiased observer, this disparity in noise level would lead you to believe that the right is great and the left is evil.

    Recall how refreshing it was to have Michael Ware call out McCain about the safety of Baghdad, and how quickly the right accused Michael Ware of heckling McCain at a press conference. They wanted us to think that Ware isn’t honest, simply rude.

    In the end, I think we need some outrage in our discussion, as long as the ‘punishment fits the crime’. Anyone who is offended by our swearing at Gonzales when he is caught lying under oath to Congress is probably not an unbiased reader anyway.

  • I have several far right friends. They are very naive and want badly to believe that the US is God’s shining beacon and the President is beyond rapproach. Yes, they are overly respectful, yet highly emotional. No FACTS are going to interfere with their heartfelt belief system anyway. They probably would be shocked with some of the discourse, but FACTS would have no bearing anyway. The rabid right on the other hand, lives for shock value and poor discourse isn’t likely to make them hate us any less because it is already their currency. Soooooo as you were…

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