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The Impressive Hypocrisy of the GOP
To be fair to Gerson, he is merely following in his mentor’s footsteps. Recruited by Karl Rove in 1999 for the Bush campaign, he has learned at the feet of an audacious master. Rove, if you’ve not been paying attention, appears to be campaigning for Nobel Prize in the category of keeping a straight face while spouting bullshit—just as soon as the category is invented. This week he made the same silly argument that Gerson did, but to be honest, one could pick almost any utterance by this honored Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and Newsweek columnist to make this point. Google and I just happen to stumble on one, in which, I kid you not, Karl Rove, who headed the Office of Political Affairs, the White House Office of Public Liaison, the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, etc., is shocked, shocked that the Obama White House is (allegedly) being used for political purposes. I swear I’m not making this up. Here he is, during the Limbaugh flap, complaining to Greta Van Susteren:
ROVE: They have assigned a senior aide to President Obama [who] is heading this up inside the White House, an unnamed aide. This has clearly got Carville, Begala, and Rahm Emanuel, who talk literally every day—they have an early-morning phone call. This is clearly something that they've concocted. And the question that we—there are two questions we ought to ask. First of all, is this appropriate? The idea that the White House is devoting all this time and energy and effort when we've got all this myriad problems facing the country, that they've got senior aides in the White House gaming out how they can make Rush Limbaugh the headline in the evening news seems to me to be a little petty, small, and really inappropriate.
I know my job here is to have something to say about that, but I don’t see how I can possibly improve on it.
Of all of Bush’s disaster lieutenants, the one who has most successfully reinvented himself is probably David Frum. He was the first one out the door, and bet badly on a hagiographic portrait of his boss when he was still riding high, but quickly switched gears and starting voicing misgivings. While Frum is better at it than his colleagues, his project is the same: to paint Obama and company as no different than Bush, and hence, make the implicit case that Bush wasn’t so bad after all. In a conversation with a reporter at the liberal American Prospect, he explains, “In a way…Paul Krugman is the General Shinseki of the Obama administration. The Axelrods and others are like those who fired Shinseki. They don't want to know, because it would be too inconvenient.”
Now think about that analogy for a second (which, to be honest, is 99/100ths of second more than it deserves): General Shinseki was a top-ranking career military officer under the command of his superiors who tried to warn the country, correctly it turns out, that we were being deliberately misled into a potentially disastrous military engagement by his gung-ho civilian counterparts. For this, he was fired from his job and forced to end his career in apparent ignominy, attacked ceaselessly and anonymously, by those who forced his firing. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who teaches at Princeton University and enjoys a sideline as America’s most influential political columnist, publishing twice weekly in The New York Times, the country’s most important newspaper. He has an intellectual disagreement with members of the administration about the size and scope of its economic-recovery policy, has been the topic of no friendly fire whatever, and yet … Actually, I can’t go on. Perhaps I’m insufficiently schooled in the ex-Bush Aide College of Audacious Analysis, but I’m as lost as Jimmy Hoffa’s body in trying to locate even a microcosm of meaning in that analogy.
Back in the real world, in polls released this week, Obama’s 66 percent approval rating is higher at this (ridiculously early) point in his presidency than it was for either Bush or Clinton. His approval rating is more than double that of his Republican opponents in Congress, and despite this moment of profound economic uncertainty and emergency, Americans are, according to a CNN poll, less pessimistic about the future than they were a year ago.
My advice, guys: Next time, blame Canada….
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Obama, the Un-decider
Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
Why Democrats Are Smiling
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
The Speech of His Life—Again
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
How E.L. Doctorow Does It
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
Here is a surprise. A left winger who continues to bash Bush and his inner circle. Boy! I would not expect this from a liberal journalist, employee of MSNBC and Media Matters for America (a group concocted by the Clintons).
Can this guy be any more transparent? I think that he needs to look into the approval ratings for Obama and Congress because polls remain in dumper and Obama's are dropping.
I would take Bush over Obama any day!!!
Of course, you attack Alterman while completely ignoring his story. Oops! Another GOP attack method! The story just happened to be very, very accurate...another unfortunate coincidence for br549.
Here's a surprise. A right winger who continues to support Bush and his inner circle. Boy! I would say this is unexpected but its not. Typical of a conservative blogger making up facts as they go along and creating a conspiracy theories around the founding of Media Matters for America to boot. Hint: The Clinton's had nothing to do with it. It was founded by David Brock who once wrote for the American Spectator, and lied about Clinton for a living, until his conscious caught up with him.
Can you be any more uninformed and transparent? I think you need to look at the approval ratings for Obama and Congress because the polls remain in their favor.
You and the other 23% are the only people on this planet who would take Bush over Obama. Its why the GOP lost the last two elections and will continue to be the margins of American politics, not to mention the laughing stock of the world.
"Not only is the trend one that's been building over time, but it is driven in part by the fact that partisan divide is always stronger under Democratic presidents-Bush II being the exception-because Democrats tend to give their opponents a chance while Republicans do not. Second, two Bush terms that went about as well as a biblical flood-see above-have left the party denuded of all but its most ideologically driven elements."
br6875 = Q.E.D.
(PS - Obama's 66% approval rating in the recent Gallup poll are the highest of his presidency. Only in Bizarro Bush-Rove-Rush world does this count as "dropping." Of course, reality has a well-known liberal bias, as Steven Colbert likes to say. And Congress' ratings are up too, btw. But I'm sure this gets little coverage over at FoxNews, Drudge, & RedState).
HAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA. BRB6875....priceless. That was one of the greatest posts. Your response made no sense, and had nothing to do with the authors premise. Well played.
Amen to this! How dare Rove, the Master at politicizing things, criticize someone else for supposedly doing the same thing. Also, what they SAY is politicizing is really just undoing that done by Bush and his cronies. God, it's like these people are so divorced from reality that they can't even see the logical results of their own actions. How did these people evolve, and why did people vote for them?
Hey Chris314--what logical results are you referencing??
hey Chris314--what logical results are you referencing?
Hey br6875 -- take responsibility for the actions of your party. You neocons are like a bunch of pathetic whiny children, and you just don't get it: you lost, your party is moribund, and the democrats are undertaking the enormous task of fixing what your party broke.
Live with it and shut up.
It would be interesting to see Alterman apply his tortuous, rigorous analysis of words, intent and their meaning to the very words spoken by Obama during his campaign.
hey br6875--how about making a point? Your only counter to the argument proferred in the article is that he must be a "left winger." You rely, therefore, on the idea that anything a "left winger" says is, by definition, wrong. That type of argument doesn't fly here. You want to "win" this debate? Then try to come up with something other than a pejorative label. Even the author, in his attack on "right wingers" Karl Rove and Mike Gerson, looks at the substance of what they say to point out what he perceives as their flaws. How about you try the same? Point out what the author here says, using his own words, and then tell us why the points he makes are invalid. Until then, you're just another member of the Cheeto Brigade, spouting off ditto-head nonsense and working on a heart attack. Well done.
Hey, bS875, Obama's poll numbers have ACTUALLYGONE UP! In what lala land do you live in? OH, well, we all need our fantasies, I suppose. Reality is too dificult.
The magical thinking of Gerson, Rove and Frum cannot erase the devastating reality of W. eight years in office. They can receive media contracts and fellowship grants but nothing will ever change that truth. Calling someone a left winger or progressive will not erase what Team Bush did to the country.
Hey br, all the logical references you want are right there in the article, especially the part in Rove's own words. Either learn to read or find out what logic really is. Good grief.
Then WHY does Main Stream Media continue to perpetuate the myth that the Reich wingers have any merit at all?
Money. Pure airwaves profit.
Until the MSM gets some balls and integrity, these dangerous, lying thieves will fill the airwaves, and stupid morons like br6875 will believe that Bush was a great president and Obama is to blame for the disaster that is America.
I could scream it makes me so fed up.
Ok, Alterman, I am a liberal, and I agree with your argument that the GOP, as always, is being hypocritical.
See what I just did there? I set up my comment by inviting you to keep reading with a sympathetic viewpoint, because you already know I am on your side, or at least respect your views.
But do you know how you began your article? By establishing that the GOP spokespeople are incompetent, ideologically obsessed, and audacious. You then continued to assert that Bush was, if not the worst president in history, near the bottom.
Do you see the problem with your approach? A little? By beginning the article the way you did, you ensured that not a single conservative would read past the first few sentances, or if they did, they would be approaching it defensively and defiantly the way most liberals approach watching Fox News. By beginning the article the way you did, you seem to not care in the slightest about convincing readers and engage them in true debate and rational argument, but rather give your liberal readers a chance to pat themselves on the back for the things they already agree with. Because of that introduction, your entire article was utterly pointless, and accomplished nothing in the way of changing the political discourse in this nation.
Excellent, well-written piece. It is as important that we, as a nation, go forward with our memories intact. In fact, it is as important to our future, as Germany's was following the Hitler years.
At least Bush was a decent man, on a personal level. But can you imagine what would have happened if Karl Rove had been our actual President?
Please, how was Bush a decent man on a personal level? Maybe if you compare him to Hitler, yes, but I wouldn't say that being better than Hitler made him decent.
littlequeenie- I should clarify that as a President he was an absolute disaster. However, he has certain personal qualities that are decent, such as being a good father, husband, and a loyal friend. The loyalty thing is what got him in trouble, because he was also loyal to a bunch a scallywags like Rove, Cheney, and the Oil-ey boys.
Truly, though, do you think he was, or is any more corrupt than any of the rest of the politicians serving the American public?
Always politics,who made Carl Rove, a brilliant, schemer, a guru in this country. He is suave and cool, and thoroughly,collected. Yet he and the administration, and Bush and Chaney, raped, us and fleeced, and destroyed a huge %by not watching over the people of the US.They all should be held accountable, for not having oversights, agencies, people in charge, protecting those who needed them.You know at first I thought the Japanese were out of whack when someone committed suicide, or was put to death over not watching over their jobs. Well, people are bankrupted, spiritually and financially, schools, are closing, iras, devalued, people out of their homes, children cant go to college,we have been rebuilding infrastructure in a country that we should have never destructed,and billions and trillions just pass hands. nd before anyone sys anything I am not Democrat, at this point Im not sure of anything.Except, maybe if Chaney Bush, Rove, all of the wallstreeters, bankers, war money was returned we ll would be fine and growing.Mismanagement, unaccountability, free checking accounts with all our dollars.Look around there are no jobs, industries, productions growing, here.Nothing was done to benefit our country.nd Bush and Chaney and the mastermind Rove and many others,..............and for Republicans, who wish our country and this president to fail, you already all failed, we are trying something new.Pray as Americans that he succeds.
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Hockey dog I just read what you wrote, as much as I blame, Pres. Bush, I do believe he was a happy go lucky guy.Rove, and Chaney.................................................
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I'm still confused why Rove isn't in jail yet??
Eric, thank God you have a forum to write these thoughts. They are my sentiments exactly!
You've put into words everything I have thought about the con and neocon pundits. But I suggest one slight change - instead of inventing a new Nobel category, why not put them in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, or even the Guinness Book of World Records for the deepest pile of BS.
Gerson is one of the many reasons why I don't stop by the wapo anymore. It's not just because they hold different views of the world than mine, they are just stupid views and a big waste of my time. I'm willing to listen to people like William Buckley, Jr, in fact we used to watch his television show all the time. There is no conservative thinker today who approaches him in critical thinking.
Absolutely everthing the Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal is a full-on guffaw. Re-writing history is his new career. Re-selling Bush makes Rove a lot of money. He also has to keep stroking the "Righties". They demand to be stroked and lied to, and they are.
Mr. Alterman, very disappointing article, you blatantly disregard any and every comment ever made by Democrats regarding their own lack of shortcomings. How many second chances do you need to get it right, too much is at stake not to hold everyone to the same standard. Talk about memory loss! Look in the mirror. At least act like you're above the same tactics by practicing something different than what you berate.
More disappointing hate mongering by failed whacko government teat sucklers like Jacklegs. No wonder you lost in '88, smaller wonder no one has ever heard of you, thank goodness. Why does the webmaster allow shameless commercials like this?
Reckless, good job pointing out the irrationality we need to be diligent in disregarding.
We should leave Guantanamo open so we can lock up the lynchpins of the Bush Adminstration like Rove, Cheney, Rummy etc. for screwing up our great nation.
It's up to us, the majority, to fix what these kooks have messed up.
"George W. Bush is widely considered to be, if not America's worst president ever, than certainly in the bottom four or five."
There's a pure statement of opinion-primarily a Leftist opinion. While I lean to the right I do acknowledge that the last four years of Bush was a waste of our time. What a lame duck. However, all this Bush-bashing needs to end. The Left acts like he was Hitler or Mussolini. There have been some real Democratic flops for president as well. Anyone care to recall Carter and the Iran hostage crisis? Gas rationing? Both parties have had some real hum-dingers in office. The answer is a viable third party to keep the other two in check.
"George W. Bush is widely considered to be, if not America's worst president ever, than certainly in the bottom four or five."
There's a pure statement of opinion-primarily a Leftist opinion.
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A statement of opinion, perhaps. But a widely shared one (& not just among leftists apparently).
http://www.pollingreport.com/wh-hstry.htm
I lived through Carter. Compared to W, Carter was the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.
If the "Justice Department" wasn't corrupt, and Democrats had the courage of their convictions, these clowns would now be under indictment & too busy defending their indefensible actions, to offer up more of their sociopathic commentary. Somehow, some way, 55% of the popular vote and 58 Senators do NOT translate into a functioning majority, while under Bush (
Thank you.
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