There Krauthammer goes again

July 5, 2008

As a rule, there’s very little point in critiquing Charles Krauthammer columns. It’s a bit like correcting George W. Bush’s grammar — the errors are obvious, but a little too easy.

But Krauthammer’s latest column, a semi-coherent anti-Obama rant published yesterday, was an embarrassment to himself and the publication that ran it (the Washington Post). By any reasonable measure, the man has the intellectual seriousness of a house-plant.

Most of the initial attacks are just trite. Obama “disdained” flag lapel pins. He “seduc[ed] the hard-core MoveOn Democrats.” He had “last year’s most liberal voting record in the Senate” (which is still a ridiculous claim, by the way). He’s guilty of “brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles,” an attack I continue to find bewildering in light of John McCain’s dozens of high-profile flip-flops.

But Krauthammer soon shifted from pedantic hackery to outright deception by attacking Obama for reversing course on Iraq.

Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama’s cynicism. He will make the move much sooner. He will use his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and to formally abandon his primary season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.

The shift has already begun. Yesterday, he said that his “original position” on withdrawal has always been that “we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.” And that “when I go to Iraq . . . I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

He hasn’t even gone to Iraq and the flip is almost complete. All that’s left to say is that the 16-month time frame remains his goal but that he will, of course, take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.

Done.

Why the Post didn’t just reject such tripe out of hand is a mystery.

Krauthammer plays an odd game in the column — telling readers what will happen (based on nothing more than his own ability to see future events that have not occurred) and then telling readers about events that didn’t happen (based on nothing more than his own ability to manufacture bogus narratives).

So, what we get is a column that argues Obama will abandon his commitment to with a withdrawal policy (when all evidence points to the opposite conclusion) and an argument that Obama already has abandoned his commitment to with a withdrawal policy (when all evidence points to the opposite conclusion).

“He hasn’t even gone to Iraq and the flip is almost complete.” If by “flip,” Krauthammer means “embraces the exact same policy that he’s consistently maintained for over a year,” then sure, he’s absolutely right. If, however, we speak and understand English, than Krauthammer is trying to con readers into believing something that is clearly and demonstrably false.

Note to the Washington Post editorial page: the purpose of op-ed columns is to provide analysis, context, and commentary on current events, not to give unhinged ideologues a forum to publish obvious untruths.

Krauthammer actually goes so far as to argue that Obama is “assiduously obliterat[ing] all differences with McCain on national security and social issues,” which, of course, is pure fantasy.

I’ll just let Yglesias take it from here:

Consider such non-obscure points as John McCain is pro-life and has said he wants to appoint judges who will restrict abortion rights, whereas Barack Obama is pro-choice. John McCain favors an amendment to California’s constitution that would take back gay and lesbian couples’ newfound marriage rights whereas Barack Obama opposes such an amendment. Barack Obama opposes a permanent American military presence in Iraq whereas John McCain favors it. Barack Obama thinks torture is wrong even when the CIA does it, whereas John McCain thinks it’s great for the CIA to torture people. Barack Obama favors good-faith high-level negotiations with Iran, whereas John McCain wants to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”

One could go on, but it hardly seems necessary — the only question is why The Washington Post thinks it’s a good idea to publish columns that are designed to mislead its audience rather than to inform its audience, or why they think customers would want to pay money for a publication that behaves that way.

Thanks for “nailing” the Hammer—–Krauthammer,that is. Sour Krauthammer.

  • I agree the article was horrible, and it is becoming clear that MSM is in a push to try and distort Obama’s positions while giving McCain a pass. I think the fact that so many of Obama’s so called supporters are whining about one thing or another has only embolded the media. Obama is not perfect in fact he has stated this more than once, but some how people seem to have unreasonable expections. With out a doubt Obama would be a million times better than McCain even if you do not agree with everything.

  • You only have to read the Post’s own editorials to understand why they publish the Hammer.Like OneNewsNow and the PostChronicle (what IS that?), it portrays a righwing fantasy world. The trouble is that, unlike wackjob websites, the Post is the major newspaper of our nation’s capital and its only alternative is the Moonie-owned Times. It never was as good as it should be, but its comedown is a sad occasion for the country. Does anyone read it uncritically anymore?

  • Well, the whole purpose is to mis-lead. I don’t know how anyone who is paying attention can be surprised by that.

  • Sadly, it’s not only the Washington Post that publishes this dribbel. Krauthammer is syndicated. This bullshit was published in yesterday’s “liberal” Atlanta Journal-Constitution too.

  • Republicans never cease to amaze me. With the hemorraghing (sp? — stil waiting for caffeine to hit) of support for McCain across the board, the one thing he has going for him is the fact that he supports the war and the continuation of our troop committment there. (Yes, many of us think this is the best reason for voting against McCain, but there are still Republicans who do support the war, and right now they represent the last solid wall of McCain support.)

    So what do Republicans do? They argue that Obama is really moving to the McCain position.

    I’m a Mets fan, and am suffering through this horrible season, but if there were some way of taking prominent Republican strategists and giving them jobs as the GMs and Managers of the other National League East teams, we’d win the division this year and probably win over 100 games the next five years.

  • krauthammer is a very sick person, but putting his problems aside, the wapo, like so many papers, labors under the peculiar delusion that writing an “opinion” column frees you from any obligations to the “facts.”

    it’s as though they never read keynes point out that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.

  • Dear Sir,

    I really must object. I, and my domestic foliage colleagues, are FAR more serious intellectually than Krauthammer, as I believe any “reasonable measure” will show. We demand a retraction.

    Yours,
    Ficus Tree
    Association of House Plants of America

  • The thesis that Obama is “obliterating” meaningful differences with McCain of course cannot be supported by anything. Krauthammer’s description of a potential Iraq flip by Obama is plausible – the difference is, he assumes that is what Obama will do, whereas I merely hope it won’t. If Obama does lurch toward the losing center on Iraq, he would play it just the way Krauthammer describes. I hope he does not. I am not yet a true Obama believer and he has shaken me up a little bit these last two weeks.

  • Krauthammer is in the company of Richard Gerson, David Broder, Richard Cohen, and Robert Novak, plus any number of drive-by conservatives. Publishing puerile right wing bullshit is what the Post does.
    All you have to do to note the Post’s agenda is look at the change in tone of the ledes following the election of 2006. The tone changed from “Democrats Block Judicial Nominations,” to “Democrats Fail to Pass S-CHIP,” without missing a beat.

  • WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, INSULT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE? … that’s what you’re doing in this article, to Joe Scarborough … and, that’s what the Carpetbagger is doing to Charles Krauthammer. You guys are resorting to insults. It’s like the pot calling the kettle black. I’ve also noticed that CNN continually leans towards the left in which blogs (like yours) they choose to publish, or moderate online. The published blog responses to your pro Obama, far left rants are merely your lock-step followers reiterating your words. Where’s the good old American discourse, debate, exchange of perspectives? I’ve also noticed that the pro Obama bloggers continually stoop to personal attacks and insults. A common Obama tactic … let the supporters launch the attacks, so Barrack can stay above the fray. I’d be EXTREMELY surprised if you actually publish this opposing point of view!

  • I’d be EXTREMELY surprised if you actually publish this opposing point of view!
    I’d be extremely surprised if a troll ever actually read the comments in a thread or digressed from troll boilerplate.

  • Why is it that the Post will publish op-eds by idiots with an agenda based on lies and half truths yet they never seem to publish a Glenn Greenwald op-ed or Benen or Yglesias or Josh Marshall or the hundreds more writers who post truths backed up with facts?

    Answer: They have an agenda…a republican, corporate, operation Mockingbird, RNC controlled agenda. Why even pretend they are anything more than pure propaganda. Is it “We know where you live Mr. Editor and have tapped your emails and phones and will have your daughter raped if you don’t cooperate” or do these editors just happily think this ought to fix them damn liberals. How could they and what is wrong with them and Don’t they understand are questions they laugh at. Like asking a serial killer, “Why are you doing this?” Your questions address a press that simply does not exist anymore. A corporate owned media will promote a corporate agenda…period. Look at what happened to NPR with it’s corporate sponsors…Juan Cole milking the Fox noise money machine. Just pathetic…your asking for integrity.

  • Lee, it’s obvious that CBR has allowed your opinion to be shown on this thread, since I can read it right now.

    So now the floor is yours. Proceed to defend Krauthammer’s postion.

  • What Joey said. Which is why I keep arguing that our work isn’t over in November – it’s just beginning. Corporate media needs to be castrated, big time. More specifically, the ownership of corporate media has to be taken out of the hands of a few millionaire Publicans (all the other Publicans are suckers), and spread around some. This concentration of ownership is one of the many blights on America we inherited from Ronnie Reagan.

    And if we manage to deconcentrate media ownership, we might try to make capitalism work for all of us by putting the ownership of all corporations into the hands of their workers. But I digress, and now I’m off topic…

  • Why the Post didn’t just reject such tripe out of hand is a mystery.

    What’s mysterious is that, at this late date, you are still mystified!

    Tripe has been Fred Hiatt’s specialty for years (e.g.).

  • zhak:

    Well, the whole purpose is to mis-lead. I don’t know how anyone who is paying attention can be surprised by that.

    Yep. It’s called manufacturing reality.
    The Dems can only do two things in regard to it:

    1) Push back by cataloguing and annotating the lies ( a la Steve Benen’s great work).
    2) Manufacture a contrasting reality.

    In regard to #2: Check out the DNC ad: McCain’s 100 years in Iraq.
    Check out the whole ad… esp. how to fund it at the end.

    You want to whip the shit out of the AP?
    You want to poke Krauthammer’s eyes out with your middle fingers?
    Want to de-ball Rupert Murdoch and leave him broke?

    Here’s how: To destroy the enemy you must outspend him in the manufacturing of reality.

    That’s probably the most important sentence I’ve ever written.
    That’s it. That’s all of it. And here’s the thing: It’$ totally on you and me…

  • said it before, I’ll say it again… horseshtittery like Krauthammer’s isn’t about building support for McCain, it’s about confusing potential Obama supporters & disheartening current Obama supporters so that they smply give up, stop caring & most importantly not vote. A potential Obama voter who stays home is as good as a vote for McCain, as far as they’re concerned.

    A McCain win is another 4 year pass of responsibilty for reporters in the MSM. Any reporter with integrity or honor is, with few exceptions, out of the msm, leaving this expensive influential playground to those with that dopey insular frat-boy mentality. No responsibility, no repurcussions if you keep toeing the official line. An Obama win means they’ll have to be “responsible” journalists again & look for dirt on Obama. And they’re long past the ability to find dirt, as evidenced b the dirt they flat-out make up. They’re lazy & undisciplined heirs to what was once one of the most important, difficlt excting professions to which one could aspire. Better to have a McCain presidency as far as they’re concerned. They’ll be told what to think & what to write, & the paychecks will still clear. After all, who sufferd, really? Besides anyone who cares about the truth?

    But remember, I’m not a REAL progressive, so what do I know?

  • This is damned ungenerous of me, to say the least. But that poison souled little SOB would have been well served had he insulted the wrong person earlier in life. Someone who didn’t give a damn about his being in a wheelchair- someone who would have kicked his ass rather than suffer his intentionally obnoxious and belligerant behavior. Instead, he today embodies that most exerable of person: an long toothed bully.

  • But Krauthammer’s latest column, a semi-coherent anti-Obama rant published yesterday, was an embarrassment to himself and the publication that ran it (the Washington Post) — CB

    The Cabbage Hammer ain’t the only one who seems to keep his thumb up his butt 23hrs a day and suck on it for inspiration during the remaining hour. Today, the NYT is missing David (Babbling) Brooks’ column. They have a little note saying “David Brooks is off today”. That was too good to pass up, so I wrote a Letter to the Editor:
    “Dear Sir,
    David Brooks is “off” everyday, not just today. Like a raw piece of meat, left unrefrigerated for too long.”
    I doubt the letter will get published, but writing it was a beneficial experience for my inner child.

  • Why the Post didn’t just reject such tripe out of hand is a mystery.

    Mystery??? What mystery????

    The Washington Post is ideologically in the same boat with the Washington Times.

    I know you well enough, Steve, to know your middle name is not “Pollyanna,” but then you keep this wide-eyed innocent thing going….

    The Washington Post, outside of a couple reporters, is a Republican propaganda operation.

  • The media pro-Obama bias is so obvious that it makes one sick in the stomach. And in this review we have another example. Obama is a politician of an old kind.

  • I really find your unending shock, shock, at the bias and lack of journalistic standards in the media, but specifically your surprise here on the AP pro-McCain pieces and the Washington Post’s embrace of Krauthammer’s tripe, really a bit tedious. For someone with as much insight, experience, and convictions as you, Steve, you seem to have forgotten that the media is always biased, and propaganda is always part of a political campaign. Our flawed system does not follow the script of a middle school civics lesson, of which there aren’t any anyway. The corporate media are in the tank for McSame. End of discussion. It’s a war and has to be fought as one. Could we be a little less naive?

  • Doesn’t the ‘success’ of the surge – although the Pentagon gives much of the credit to the Sons of Iraq, not the extra troops, for tamping down violence – suggest that it’s more likely that Obama’s 16 month withdrawal schedule is achievable, not less?

    Maybe I’m missing something obvious here.

  • What I don’t understand about the conservatives’ position on Iraq is that it starts from a fundamental political philosophy – if Iraqis are offered democracy, they will it embrace it and it will spread – and then their strategic policies do everything they can to spit in the face of their original premise.

    That the neo-con belief in ‘the domino effect’ of democracy is the real impulse behind the invasion of Iraq isn’t really in doubt. The belief, and the suggestion that the invasion of Iraq would be a means to achieving this, was outlined as early as 2000 in policy documents from The Project For A New American Century.

    But then the thinking starts to get confused and contradictory. US troops weren’t welcomed as liberators; a democratic movement didn’t start to coalesce. Much of this stems from the fact that the right-wing think-tanks are long on lofty aspirations and short on Middle East historical knowledge.

    So strategic aims and plans change. More troops. Containment of violence, not spread of civic programs.

    But notice that the actual regard the neo-cons have for the Iraqi people also undergoes a fundamental shift. Instead of the open-minded embracers of democracy, they are now regarded as backward tribes who must be bludgeoned into line by force.

    And so we come to two decisions – one strategic, one tactical – that betray this turnaround in how the Iraqis are viewed. Tactically, the surge is seen as necessary because – well because the Iraqis just aren’t doing what they’re told. It becomes more and more simply an American administration of a foreign country. This is a total contradiction of the philosophical starting point. You can’t have a ‘domino effect’ if you don’t have even one democratic domino.

    Strategically we start talking about a generational presence in Iraq. Truth be told, 100 years could even be a minimum. This is flat out contradictory to the starting point. Weren’t Iraqis meant to say ‘Thank you for freeing us. We are now going to start up that democracy we always wanted.’ What we’re now talking about is numerous bases throughout the country, bristling with bombs and munitions and ready to hit whichever benighted mullahdom raises US ire.

    But look in the small print of the Pentagon report on the surge for a rather large detail:

    “The report cited the emergence of the Sons of Iraq as a major reason for the downturn in civilian-oriented violence and deaths. The groups are made up of an estimated 90,000 Iraqis, often former insurgents, paid by U.S. commanders to help protect neighborhoods and provide intelligence on extremists.”

    So in amidst the well-earned pats on the back for our brave young men and women, there’s an acknowledgement that *their* brave young men and women might have a lot to do with it as well.

    So let’s go back to the beginning. Could it just be that the Iraqis are less progressive than originally thought, but more progressive than is currently thought? Could it just be that what Obama says about a structured withdrawal with a clear timeline is likely to hasten the process of Iraqi independence? After all, people tend to stand on their own two feet a lot more quickly if they’re not propped up indefinitely. Could it just be that McCain and the Republican notion of US troops in the Middle East indefinitely is counter-productive and antagonistic to the process that the Project For The New American Century set to out to achieve?

    Ironically, what Obama is doing now is showing the same faith in the Iraqi people that Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrahms originally claimed to have. The Republican and conservative intellectuals such as Charles Krauthammer on the other hand have shown their faith to be paper-thin and that palpable cultural arrogance and scorn lurks just beneath the surface. They believe that of course we need to be in the Middle East for a hundred years. Those dumb camel jockeys couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. Or a democracy in a desert.

  • The Establishment will go out of its way, even if its doing so in a transparent manner, to try to prevent a scary black man from becoming president. That’s plain enough to see.

  • “Remarkable improvements on the ground” in Iraq? Is he referring to the vast, walled-off prison of Baghdad? The succesfull ethnic cleansing campaign of the Shiites and Sunni’s (who still hate each other)? Iran calling the shots and establishing truces? American troops still dieing in a senseless conflict (albeit, thankfully, at lower levels)? Lastly, why on Earth do respectable publications still give Krauthammer a forum?

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