Joe Klein Can’t Read

John on May 22, 2009 at 8:39 am

After Joe Klein was caught earlier in the week suggesting Charles Krauthammer would be more liberal if he could walk, he decides to double down in an attack on Krauthammer this morning:

Consider today the dueling columns of Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks. Krauthammer, the ideologue, makes a debater’s boutique argument: Obama is just continuing Bush’s anti-terror policies with a little window-dressing. This elides the actual truth of the matter…

The truth, as Klein sees it, is that Bush was already on his way toward sane policy well before Obama took office. No doubt this is the first time Klein has said anything kind about a Bush policy in print. Of course it only appears now as a way to deflect criticism from “The One.” Later on, Klein returns to Krauthammer’s piece:

As for Krauthammer, and the assorted wingnuts he is parroting, there’s a weird disconnect going on: one paragraph, Obama is simply adopting Bush’s policies…the next paragraph, he’s running the country off a cliff.

In other words, how can Obama be blamed for “running the country off a cliff” if he’s only following Bush’s policy? It’s a good question…

Rather, it would be a good question if this summary of Krauthammer’s piece had any relationship to reality. I’ve read it twice now. There’s not a single line that suggests Obama is “running the country off a cliff.” He neither says it nor implies it. Klein apparently invented this little straw man in hopes that no one would actually read his piece. Can Joe Klein read?

The core of Klein’s rant is this breast-beating account of Obama’s superiority:

In fact, the thrust of Obama’s national security policy is dramatically different from Bush’s. His emphasis on a comprehensive regional approach in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the opposite of Bush’s feckless abandonment of this far more crucial fight in the war against Al Qaeda. His decision to engage Iran, his decision to push forward in the Middle East (including the demand that Israel stop building illegal settlements), his decision to participate in global climate change talks, his decision not to indulge in the disdain–manifested by Cheney yet again in his speech–for our European allies. These are all dramatic turns for the better.

A few points:

• Bush didn’t fecklessly abandon Afghanistan. He focused on Iraq until that war had been won. In fact it was Obama who attempted, circa early 2007, to fecklessly abandon Iraq. Bush stayed the course and won the war. It’s only because he did this that Obama has the luxury to focus on Afghanistan.
• Iran declared a de facto war on US soldiers on Iraqi soil, sending bombs, weapons, money and trainers into the country. Bush recognized this and, by taking tough action, forced the Iranians to back off. Once again, Obama can play the kinder, gentler President on TV only because the hard work was done by his predecessor. But so far his decision to engage Iran (via a cheesy You Tube video among other things) has produced nothing. Those 7,000 centrifuges keep spinning deep beneath Natanz. When they stop, then he can claim credit. Until then, he’s accomplished nothing but buying the Iranians time.
• What the hell does participation in “global climate change talks” have to do with the substance of this article? Nothing. Klein is trying to pad Obama’s thin resume’ by slipping this in.
• As for respecting our allies, we see what that has benefited us. For all the adulation they showed during Obama’s apology tour, he garnered a total of 5,000 additional troops for Afghanistan, all of them temporary and few if any for combat roles. Europe also refused to take any of the Gitmo detainees off our hands. Mission accomplished, Barack!

If you’ve read this far, then like me you’ve wasted far too much time on Joe Klein’s laughable account of Obama’s superiority. Click over and read Krauthammer’s piece which makes a clean, substantive argument that Obama, by his actions as opposed to his rhetoric, is absolving Bush’s sins daily.

Finally, I know it’s not entirely fair to judge a blog by it’s comments, but still you have to love this response to Klein’s piece:

I try to cut Obama some slack by remembering that while I know that Cheney and Bush f*cked things up, I don’t know just how badly they f*cked things up. I’d like to see both of them, and their henchmen, dangling from gallows (and I mean that literally), but Obama is probably doing a better job than I would of actually fixing the country.

Nice readership you got there, Joe.

Category: Foreign Affairs, MSM & Bias |