I asked a mostly rhetorical question in my previous comment about why so many of today's most dishonest politicians seem to have gone to Yale in the 60's, when Bush did. But it just occured to me that it wasn't necessarily anything having to do with Yale itself or the kind of person who gets into and attends Yale, which I assume can be said about all of the other leading universities such as Harvard, Princeton or Stanford. Perhaps it's more a matter of Yale being the sort of school where the offspring of this country's richest and most powerful families attended, and where some of these families decided to turn Yale into a sort of "recruitment" center for future business, legal and political allies. I.e. a place to cement social relationships that would eventually prove to be valuable as professional relationships.

Which, of course, can be said of all top schools. But Yale was a Bush family school, and given this family's long history of being involved in some pretty shady business and political goings-on, it does stand to reason that it was specifically looking to recruit allies to assist them in such future dealings. In that sense, Yale could be seen as a recruiting center for the country's future upper crust "mafia" (in much the same way that Regent U has been used to recruit and develop the FedSoc "mafia").

So perhaps it's not a strange coincidence that so many of today's less honorable (to say the least) political players went to Yale when Bush did. Perhaps that was something mapped out way back then. I.e. Bush's father or grandfather might have made a conscious effort to recruit people back then who could help the family out in the future, using Jr. as "bait" (but, perhaps, not realizing what a central role he'd play in their schemes someday, given how unpromising he must have seemed at the time--but then again, perhaps they saw in him the very qualities they felt would be ideally suited for their schemes, and recruited suitably unprincipled, smart and ambitious people to surround him with to complement those very schemes).

Just a theory that I'm putting out there. Is it too CT to take seriously?

I try to watch WJ semi-regularly, albeit in recorded form since I live on the west coast and it's on too early (or late) for me to watch (or call in) live. I do it not for pleasure, but to get a sense of what the other side's current talking points are likely to be, since they appear to often trial balloon them on WJ before going wide on CNN and Fox, as well as to get a sense of how crazy their supporters and shills are these days. I do this for much the same reasons that Glenn and others regularly monitor wingnut blogs--i.e. know your enemy and all.

I also try to watch the occasional right-wing speech or panel discussion on CSPAN, to get a further sense of how nutty and/or dishonest they are these days (and they are still very much both, unfortunately but unsurprisingly). It ultimately all comes down to four or so basic tenets. One, Bush is trying his best and means well, even if he occasionally makes a few minor mistakes. Two, Democrats are fundamentally motivated by their hatred of Bush, which colors their criticisms and comments and thus renders them illegitimate. Three, liberals and Democrats have not had any new or good ideas about domestic or foreign policy in decades. And four conservatives and Republicans have better ideas and policies, Thusm even if Repubs aren't perfect, they're still vastly better than Dems. And that obviously goes for Bush as well. QED.

I knew enough about Davis when I saw this show to know what to expect, but it was still quite painful to watch him parrot or reinforce most of the above points. He is the very epitome of a concern troll, pretending to be on our side, but actually trashing and undermining our side while at the same time praising and reinforcing the other side. Why he does this is almost irrelevant (most likely for money, in the form of fat deals and contracts thrown his way, and out of a fundamental weakness of character that allows him to be cowed, wowed and/or bought by people whom you'd think someone of his background would despise).

By himself, Davis is a nobody. It's whom he represents, shills and works for that is most troubling, because it's not just the "other" side, but "our" side as well. He is an active player in that strange and very dangerous nexus of political operatives who bridge the gap between our side and theirs, and really represent no one's "side" but their own. And it includes, of course, people on "our" side such as the Clintons, Bob Rubin, Lieberman, and a few others whom I'd rather not mention by name since they might be our next president.

So we shouldn't kid ourselves that by getting rid of Bush and electing more Democrats, we'll be ridding ourselves of the factions that he represents. Most likely, in the near term at least, we'll just be replacing a terrible group of people with one that's only somewhat better. And people like Davis span such groups. In fact, it's their primary job.

Which makes me think that this topic might be an excellent one for Glenn to explore in a future post. I.e. the strange and unholy alliance between neoconservatives (represented by Bush and Cheney) and neoliberals (represented by the Clintons), and bridged by people like Davis. They might have somewhat different politicies and methods, but the same basic goals, namely US military and economic hegemony, be it of the "hard" neocon or "soft" neolib variety. They are all very dangerous, and untrustworthy, and we won't truly be rid of the Bush years until we're rid of this entire accretion of imperialistic neo's.