Too little, too late (Joe Klein) pmcarpenter

[Demeter]

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/04/too_little_too_.html

April 07, 2007



No, you "tried to be respectful of the man (Bush) and the office," as you wrote Thursday, so you held your fire in a show of professional disrespect for 300 million Americans going down with his ship.


The basics, Joe. A president has two, fundamental and principle functions: fiscal and foreign policy. And the left could see clearly from the beginning that George W. Bush would "demagogue" -- as you referenced it -- both, and with a flagrant irresponsibility that took our breath away. Right off the bat he hustled insane tax cuts based on the ridiculously dubious proposition that our healthy economy could afford them. Then, when the economy took a nosedive, he hustled them based on the precisely opposing proposition that a poor economy demanded them. It was staggeringly obvious to us on the left, Joe, that this president possessed not one fiber of fiscal sanity, not to mention even a strain of simple honesty.


Then, after 911, it appeared for a few seconds that George just might respond out of character, which is to say, responsibly. We were unified in outrage -- every Republican, Democrat and Independent -- and wanted to get the bad guys. We had the entire world behind us. Yet immediately after those few seconds, George threw it all away -- the unity, the purpose, the justness -- in the unconscionable execution of a criminal shell game. Tens of thousands would perish needlessly, but you wanted "to be respectful of the man."


We on the left didn't have to studiously piece these acts together, Joe, to arrive at the disrespectful conclusion that George W. Bush is goddamn nuts and dishonest and autocratic. From the start he was throwing unreason and perfidy and unaccountability and antiConstitutionalism right in our face.


Where the hell where you, Joe? What circus were you attending? Where were your watchdog powers of condemnatory observation then? Where was your journalistic duty to report on and state the goddamn obvious? Where were you and the rest of your condescending Beltway insiders when the rest of us were ringing the goddamn bell?


I rarely use profanity in this column, Joe, but your kind exasperates the hell out of me.

[babylonsister]

1. Good stuff; I like p m carpenter, especially for wailing on Klein. Brings

to mind Sirota's take, too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=272454