{"id":10429,"date":"2007-04-06T10:30:20","date_gmt":"2007-04-06T14:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10429.html"},"modified":"2007-04-06T10:30:20","modified_gmt":"2007-04-06T14:30:20","slug":"klein-gets-shrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/klein-gets-shrill\/","title":{"rendered":"Klein gets shrill"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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). […]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.
\n
\nKlein 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?<\/p>\n

“Arrogance, incompetence, and cynicism” are<\/i> the bedrock traits of Bush’s presidency, but didn’t we know this several years ago?<\/p>\n

I also can’t help but wonder what the nation is supposed to do<\/a> about all of this.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

I agree with all of this, and I’m not criticizing Klein for coming to the same conclusions with which I wholeheartedly agree.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> much worse?<\/p>\n

Maybe he can tackle this in next week’s column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}