A Response To An Andrew Sullivan Fan Club Member
Enrevanche preaches from the Gospel of St. Andrew of the Blessed Heartache:
Mr. Bush has done more damage to the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general than many conservatives are yet prepared to accept and acknowledge.
Wouldn’t know about that, much, myself, but the John Fund article to which Enrevanche links is an article which laments the ability of the CinC to channel the oratory of Winston Churchill on a regular basis, and decries that Rs get no slack. Not exactly a damage assessment for the “conservative movement in general”.
Enrevanche continues:
And by the way… when the Wall Street Journal turns on you, and you’re a Republican president, your relevance is officially over.
One of the things I like about the WSJ is that they publish op-eds with different viewpoints. Would the Ned Lamont op-ed a few weeks back, or the Kerry op-ed before that, have similar portent? Or is Andrew hogging the coffee again?
If you haven’t followed any of my posting in ‘04 or cheerleading of the book The Case For Democracy, then perhaps this next link is worth your time.
Norman Podhoretz, the next day or so, same paper. Makes a point to discuss the Second Inaugural, to which I point to people at work who haven’t yet read the National Security Strategy. Some commentary on the Podhoretz article is at Protein Wisdom. I’m not sure how that exactly affects the President’s “relevance” to have Podhoretz’s article a day after the Fund article.
Of course, you could also listen to the president saying it his own self.
Related links, sorta, to this discussion. Almost all are from the center-right to Ralph end of the spectrum; I’ve not seen much on the left discussing these things strategically and would take inputs if you got ‘em. This week saw a lot of people discussing Israel-Lebanon, writing about how will is important in warfare. You could read Ralph or you could read Belmont Club; either remind us that if you’re going to knife someone to death, you don’t stop halfway.
- Kathleen Parker revises and extends Fund’s points.
- Power Line reminds us that personal charisma is also important.
- Bruce Bartlett, saying the opposite as Fund in a slightly related op-ed
- Rich Lowry, saying I’m gonna miss the current policy when it’s gone
- Shelby Steele on Western guilt vs. Islamic extremism (excerpts here since it’s subscriber only)
- Zalmay Khalilzad on what’s going on in Iraq
- General Abizaid on what’s going on in Iraq, via Hugh Hewitt
- Thomas Sowell on what’s going on bigger picture
- Edward Luttwak on what IS-LE means in the long term, the first guy I’ve seen writing about long term
- Ralph Peters on the current IS-LE state of play
- Belmont Club on will to win, Keyser Soze, and a parable in the comments
That should get you through ten minutes of boredom…
19 Responses to “A Response To An Andrew Sullivan Fan Club Member”
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August 23rd, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Linked here. And I’ll trackback if Haloscan will behave for five seconds.
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:41 pm
I am very, very disappointed to announce…
…that Haloscan barfed on a really interesting comment earlier today.
Chap tried to leave a detailed comment in response to this post, but Haloscan didn’t like the number of (perfectly formed, interesting in-context) links he included.
So he po …
August 24th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Enrevanche wrote:
“And by the way… when the Wall Street Journal turns on you, and you’re a Republican president, your relevance is officially over.”
To which Chap rhetorically wonders:
“One of the things I like about the WSJ is that they publish op-eds with different viewpoints. Would the Ned Lamont op-ed a few weeks back, or the Kerry op-ed before that, have similar portent?”
No, it wouldn’t have similar portent. Most importantly, Fund, when he’s not abusing women, works for the WSJ, whereas Lamont and Kerry (who aren’t abusers to my knowledge, don’t work for the WSJ). Any long-time reader can tell you there’s a often a huge ideological gulf between the left (house) side of the WSJ editorial double-truck and the right (guest) side.
And it’s no secret Fund is a well-known, long-time “conservative†pundit – Lamont and Kerry are either moderate to left.
Conservative Joe Scarborough jumped ship in a big way last week with his “Is Bush an Idiot†segment on his nightly MSNBC show. McCain, watching Hagel become the new McCain/media-darling/maverick-conservative, freaked out 48 hours ago to puke all over W and his 2003 rosy picture even though McCain himself was integral cheerleader and was echoing Cheney that we “will be greeted as liberators.â€
The W appeal is shrinking. And as W was the spokesperson for all things conservative, he has hurt the brand name significantly.
August 24th, 2006 at 9:02 am
I need to retract the comment about calling Fund an abuser of women. Apparently he was set-up and later exonerated. The more important point remains — he is an employee of the WSJ and has a long history of playing the role of “conservative pundit.”
August 24th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Relevance? In a lame-duck presidency? It’s ship jumping time..happens with every president in a second term.
All Rats jump ship eventually, or is it enrevachengly?
C’mon, if this was pre-9-11 there would be the same B.S. different theme…. It’s all about power and the Dims want it..screw security, screw the military, screw the Republicans….
When New York gets hit again (I don’t live there and visit rarely…) if we cut’n run and hide behind the French or the U.N. don’t look to me for support… I’ll be living remote and saying I told you so..or whoever is left.
re- your DeVille backstab and retract on Fund….no honor, no man. Read more than the first 5 Google hits. Typical of your ilk.
B2
August 24th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
BadBob,
The Fund controversy went on for months — he DID dump Mom for daughter – Google was never involved — the scandal was as prominent in the blogosphere as Jon Benet is on cable.
My ilk – you mean the reality-based community, people who can admit when they’re wrong, people who put intellectual honesty at the top of the pyramid — that ilk?
August 24th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Bob -
I’ll certainly cry myself to sleep tonight over your lack of support.
- bc
August 24th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
John,
I’m just saying that the presented evidence for Barry’s assessment is rather thin. One columnist in one newspaper makes a President “irrelevant”? Does not compute.
I must admit, though, that I’m interested in something slightly different: maintaining the public will to defend itself, a subject that is rather hotly discussed in Israel and Lebanon right now.
Actually, something Glenn Reynolds wrote today seems to make sense to me, although I don’t follow electoral politics as closely as some folks do:
Oh, and your “ilk” comment I find revealing…
August 24th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Reynold’s point is stronger than you’re original one but I still don’t think it makes it home. In fact, it’s a pretty lame rationalization for behavior brought on by historic lows in presidential popularity.
Herbert Walker went for the “kinder, gentler” theme for his campaign but still had the Gip take a major at bat for him at the convention and on the campaign trail. I wonder if the 2008 GOP nominee will even remember meeting W. Reagan never had off-camera, hide-from-the-world fundraisers in 1986 or 1988 the way W is at the moment. Reagan was never, ever this toxic to his own party.
“McCain ahead of the curve.” Not hardly. Poor bastard could have been, but now he’s playing catch-up to where Hagel is, where Lamont is, where 60+% of the electorate IS , not where they MIGHT be.
Reynolds suggest that Herbert Walker ran on a “I’m not like Reagan, but I’ll still protect the country unlike those weakling Democrats†platform. Huh? Protect us from what? AQ nor any other correlate was on the psychological/political map in 1988. Herbert Walker ran on “Read my lips…”; Dukakis ran on “competence” — national security just wasn’t in the mix.
Can you imagine any candidate in 2008 running on “kinder, gentler?” Of course not. And Reynolds is so stuck in the Malkin moment that he can’t rmember that there was a world BEFORE 9/11 and AFTER the threat of communism wasn’t seen to be quite as ominous as it did from 1946 to Gorby/Reykjavik. The kinder/gentler time, the peace dividend time.
The war and its gross mismanagement is far more polarizing an issue than anything was in 1988. The “folks” as W and O’Reilly like to say, weren’t as passionate about Iran-Contra, Reagan’s record deficits, or any other issue the way they are todayabout the war. Maybe the war issue goes away and the GOP recovers, but right now, a la 1968, the whole country is tying a failed war to the CinC and trying to banish the ugly mess to the wilderness.
Bottom line — it’s 1968, not 1988. We have exchanged a Texan full of hubris for a Texan full of hubris. Hagel, Feingold, and Lamont are vying to be the Eugene McCarthy. Very possibly Gore or Edwards will be the RFK and a GOP candidate to be determined (not McCain) will be the Nixon.
“revealing?” I’m a rather open book but beware the stereotype. There’s a wide range of folk that don’t live in the W bubble — anything from a Buchanan populist to a Chomskyite.
August 24th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Uh, okay, whatever, man. Hope that works for you.
I always figured Buchananites and Chomskyites were about the same beast–go far enough left or far enough right and you wind up in the same place, I thought.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:02 am
Maybe Mort Zuckerman, editor of US News & World Report, Mr. Middle-of-the-Road, who supported Bush in 2004, voted Bush in 2004, who now says W is the worst president of the last century would be a better example.
Of course, he hates America and lacks the “will to win”.
August 25th, 2006 at 7:56 am
One media guy–or two, or many–does not define the “relevance” of the CinC. Does not compute.
Your rhetoric matches that of some recent comments I’ve seen over at the other blog. I hope this way of “argumentation” is not the latest trend in DU circles. It does not become you.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:35 am
John- re “My ilk – you mean the reality-based community…?”
LOL. Check it out folks and make up your mind:
http://mountainphilosopher.blogspot.com/
Barry- re- “I’ll certainly cry myself to sleep tonight over your lack of support.”
Same same. Wouldn’t expect anything different, but then, being military, I’m used to it. Cheers.
B2
August 25th, 2006 at 11:55 am
It’s interesting to see the reactions to Chap’s thoughtful critique of my post.
I would only quibble with the line(s) Chap chose to emphasize; I was really making a personal evaluation of Bush using Fund’s column as a peg, as should have been clear from my first sentence (the only one Chap failed to quote) and which provides a context for the rest of my remarks:
“Some of us Republicans arrived at this conclusion a long, long time ago. ”
And, sorry, the “one media guy doesn’t matter” argument doesn’t wash. Reading such a pointed critique of a Republican President or Administration on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is like seeing a critique of papal infallibility appear in The American Catholic. I continue to feel that Fund’s article is highly significant, just as the high-profile dissents of such marquee conservative pundits as William F. Buckley and George Will (recently) and, much earlier, neocon darling and Dr. “End Of History” Francis Fukuyama, are highly significant.
The central point everyone seems to be missing is that these are *not* the usual MSM suspects, and these are *not* Democrats or liberals by anyone’s rational definition of the term (neither am I, by the way; I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President in my life, and only once or twice in 20 years for any major office; I did, proudly, with great pleasure, and to no avail, vote against Jesse Helms back when I lived in North Carolina, every chance I got, regardless of who was running against him.)
Anyway. These are blue-chip conservative Republicans who are now jumping ship, not the Librul Media Boogeymen, and when a President loses his previously loyal base, as Dubya is in the public and embarrassing process of now doing, that has a profound on the continued “relevance” of his Administration, inevitably.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Erg. That has a profound *impact* on the continued “relevance”…
August 25th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I’m in agreement that I seized upon your comment, not reading it as a peg for other work, but as a thing in itself. I think we disagree in that I think that ‘relevance’ has more to do with what a guy can do in a job than what’s said in a paper this week. The president isn’t a newspaper columnist, he’s the President. It takes a lot more than columns to make someone who actually is doing things become irrelevant.
I mean, for years now I’ve seen any critique from rightward of Kos, thoughtful or not, as “jumping ship”–except when there isn’t any critique, in which case it’s “an echo chamber” or “refuses to hear dissenting viewpoints”; the presidential poll numbers have only been “at a new low” when they’re not “in free fall”; he was “going to be impeached any day now” a while back; nobody likes him, not even his dog; we were going to have Fitzmas; et cetera, et cetera. At this point I’m inured to calls like “has lost relevance” without some kind of concrete proof, especially when the claim goes high and squeaky.
And the responses I got for a good amount of link digging and research are ignored for something more important: namecalling and shrill rhetoric.
Feh.
August 25th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I have a feeling that the namecalling and shrill rhetoric is going to get progressively (pardon the expression) worse between now and November.
August 25th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Heh, I say. Heh.
August 26th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
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