Letters to the Editor
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And the answer is.......
does the American public now disapprove of the Iraq war because it was corrupt and illegal, or simply because (in all likelihood) it's been lost?
the correct answer is of course...both.
But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: Sometimes you have to end a war with the opposition you have, not with the opposition you wish you had.
This is, of course why the failure of the press as an institution remains a vital issue even as their ability to mold events wanes. Without a generation of practitioners aware and proud of the press's role as watchdog, we will always be vulnerable to misinformation and misadventures. Every step in the right direction nevertheless deserves to be celebrated.
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And you've been a big part of it
Of course, while the Bushies have provided an amazing amount of material to do themselves in, you have done a tremendously eloquent and effective job of sloshing through it all. We owe you Glenn. Thanks.
(Today's dose of they did what?!: Randall Tobias, the Deputy Secretary of State leading our AIDS initiative with an utterly ridiculous focus on abstinence, getting busted for using hookers. Good grief. We need to start handing out hypocrisy awards...makes me need to take a shower....)
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Anonymous:
Every Single Republican In America Belongs In Jail
No more fucking compromise and no more surrender.
I want to see the GOP completely discredited, disgraced, deconstructed, defeated, disbanded and destroyed.
Every single Republican alive is a traitor and a war criminal and they should never, ever be allowed to have a voice in our national conversation again.
If you are not being earnest, know that this tactic won't work here.
If, on the other hand, you are being earnest, you actually have far more in common with the people you revile than with this community.
Biggerbox:
The following quote from Thomas Jefferson has helped sustain me in recent years. It now seems more prophetic than merely hopeful.
"...we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles."
I've never seen that quote before, but that is so... just so incredibly good. Precisely what I mean about the timelessness of certain first principles, and how they transcend political party and the home-team mentality.
And thank you to everyone who found resonance with my comment -- yet another cause for hope!
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Jackals
Better, we're getting warm. You guys seem to see Tenet as "just another one of them", but there's something about his publicity campaign now that just uniquely and profoundly offends me. I basically see the Reps as 2 groups: those who still support and justify the war and can't/won't admit mistakes, except perhaps in execution (Cheney, Kristol, Krauthammer, McCain) and those few who know that the administration was profoundly flawed and dishnest but at least have had the decency to STFU (Colin Powell being the best example, but really all of major cabinet secretaries, etc who have left the WH have kept a low public profile). Tenet may not have done the most to push us into war, but he was the one with the most official authority and responsibility for the intelligence. So his inability, after admitting the depths of the mistake and his own complicity, to accept the responsibility, but instead to whine and cry that he was hung out to dry seems to me particularly morally twisted.
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Sea Change From Below
Immediately after the 2006 election, two things became clear:
(1) There had been a fundamental sea-change expressed at the ballot box. The sea change had been evident for quite some time before that--virtually from the beginning of Bush's Second Term, when he tried and failed to dismantle Social Security--but translating public opposition into instutional power, that was something new.
(2) The media was now public enemy #1. This was immediately clear from their efforts to spin the election as a conservative victory. A reality-based media would have immediately focused on the unlikely triumphs of vocal anti-war Senate candidates John Tester and Jim Webb. Instead, we had endless spinning to portray a largely economic populist crop of new House members as "conservative." This was then seamlessly blending into the rising tide of stories about Pelosi's failed Speakership. The battle lines could not have been clearer.
And so I think it's appropriate to see this week as yet more trickle-up. Just as the November election trickled up from Bush's profound unpopularity, and the GOPs lockstep embrace of him, what we've seen this week is further trickle-up from the mid-term elections. While many things contributed to it, there are at least three factors we need to recognize:
(1) The continued activist oppostion. This is what helped the Democrats keep their resolve, in the face of fierce media opposition, while brining forward and promoting the significance of the US Attorneys scandal--among others. The beating back of the Fox News debates was another major manifestation of this.
(2) The Democrats commitment to oversight and investigation. two words: Henry Waxman. Anyone who's been following what he's done as ranking member, just knew he was going to be kick-ass chair. He's not the only one, by a long shot. But he's the one who started making his investigatory list the earliest. And he's the one with the longest list today. In that sense he's the prototype.
(3) An engaged public. People have not tuned out. From the most passive indicators (Pelosi's continued rise in popularity) to the most active (expressions of outrage with Don Imus, for example), the public has remained more attentive to political matters. It has not just voted and gone home. They really do want and expect change.
With these factors in play, I think that the Imus firing was really the catalyst for the dynamic that came to a head this week. It upped the stakes. It showed that the media elite could be voted out of office, just like the GOP.
But--just like the GOP it shills for--the media stayed in denial mode. And Broder's column epitomized that--particularly when one constrasts it with Jon Stewart's spot-on analysis of Gonzales's Goodfella's performance. The world had changed all around them, and they remained utterly and totally clueless, even after Imus had been taken down.
We can expect their denial to intensify. But it's been forced out into the open, for all to see. The battle is now joined. The combination of the Broder column and the Dems response with the Bill Moyers documentary "Buying The War" marked a clear turning point.
Onward!
It is quite