Against Craziness
Kevin Drum writes about the question of Bill Kristol’s replacement: “It shouldn’t be a ‘liberal’s conservative,’ it should be a genuine, dedicated, smart, reality-grounded, conservative’s conservative — someone who will drive liberals crazy. Who best fits that bill?”
Honestly, one thing that drives me crazy is the idea that “x drives liberals crazy” is a form of praise for a conservative writer. If that’s what you’re looking for, you really can’t do better than Mickey Kaus. He’s not a genuine conservative, and he’s not that dedicated or reality-grounded but he is smart and precisely because he’s neither genuinely conservative nor dedicated he has both the skills and inclination to spend a lot of time pressing liberals’ buttons. But the goal in finding a conservative writer should be to find a writer who’s not a liberal but who liberals enjoy reading. That doesn’t need to be columns that make liberals feel good about themselves (e.g., conservatives writing about how brain-dead the GOP is, etc.) but it needs to be columns that liberals find not maddening but challenging. When I read Tyler Cowen’s skeptical notes on the stimulus, for example, I don’t become infuriated, I become better-informed about the issue. At his best, this is what David Brooks contributes on that page—he’s raised issues about public choice and so forth that liberals tend to neglect but that are genuinely important.
That’s the standard you should be reaching for, though, people who can take on strong liberal arguments and raise strong doubts about them. Not someone who “drives liberals crazy.” But that’s not just a matter of finding “someone” who can do it, but of trying to frame the job in such-and-such a way — I bet there are a lot of people on the right who could do a good job if a good job is what they were being asked by editors to do. The Times seems to have decided when it hired Kristol that what the page needed was a direct channel to Conservative Movement Central Command or something, but it would be easy enough to save money and just republish Bill O’Reilly transcripts occasionally if that’s what you want to do.
87 Responses to “Against Craziness”
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January 26th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I like to read the “Sunday Styles” section. Especially the wedding announcements!
January 26th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Man, who else would dig a weekly Fukuyama column in the NYT?
January 26th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I think the Times needs fewer right-wing columnists, not more.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
What about David Frum? He really distinguished himself with frank, insightful commentary in the past election.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Kaus is a goat blower’s goat blower.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Daniel Larison. Hands down.
Of course, that would indicate that the NYT’s “conservative” editorial choice is intended to make their readership think. All evidence points against this. I guess they figure that they already have Krugman for their “thought production” quota.
Failing Larison, how about your ol’ pal Andrew “I Don’t Even Know What ‘Conservative’ or ‘Liberal’ Bloody Mean Anymore” Sullivan? He can be the NYT’s Noonan – Kismet! (I jest . . . kind of)
January 26th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Based on what I read on their blogs, most “liberals” would find anything approaching Kids Boggler challenging.
What the NYT really needs is someone who’d challenge them in ways like – just to choose one example – this.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Larison. And I believe that the last time there was a discussion about a conservative on the Times page, Douthut’s name came up.
But Larison would be my choice.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Regarding #6, the news division would be a better choice for Sully, so he can use the full resources of CarlosSlim’s money to finally solve TriggGate.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
One of the conservative voices I check in on from time to time is Daniel Larison, currently blogging at The American Conservative, http://www.amconmag.com/larison/
I suppose he doesn’t have the resume of a Kristol or a Friedman, but he doesn’t seem to be any more self-evidently insane than either of them, and he often makes a great deal more sense than either of them.
A guy like Larison probably represents what the Conservative movement needs–he arrives at his stands more through reason than dogma, and plainly hates the slogan-chanting cult that modern American conservatism has become.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Luckily, none of the nyt editorialists are incredibly challenging. They all just write some BS that represents the zeitgeist of their political stances. The good ones add in some facts, the bad ones don’t. If want to read something challenging, the nyt opinion pages are not the place to do it.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
They don’t need a liberal or a conservative – they need an environmentalist. One who might oppose, say, infrastructure projects! I’d vote for Rebecca Solnit, or Michael Pollen.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
I think the description of a “smart, reality grounded” conservative was intended to be a joke. What else could it be?
January 26th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
You know, it actually wouldn’t surprise me (too very much) if the NYT did, in fact, hire Mssr. 24Ahead blog whore. I bet you he links to himself on their comments sections too, and he passes the bar for total batshit insanity that “conservative” “writers” tend to exhibit nowadays. It’s an obvious choice to replace Kristol! Him or Malkin, of course. Or Corsi, even.
re: #12 – Bjorn Lomborg maybe? Talk about someone who drive me crazy.
January 26th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Excellent post Matt. I think a lot of the suggestions in this thread are really good: Cowen, Frum, Douthat, Sullivan, and Larison would all be must-reads.
Personally, I think, they would benefit from two new conservatives. One should be someone economics-focused with strong academic credentials, like Greg Mankiw or Cowen or Ed Glaeser, to balance Krugman and keep him a bit more honest. The other would be more like a Douthat or a Frum to take more of a socio-political approach and (with Brooks) provide balance contra Herbert/Collins/Rich.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Douthut or McCardle but maybe they are more suited to blogging rather than writing columns.
Maybe a smart libertarian or my personal choice would be a smart liberal interventionist. The tide is with the doves (everyone jumped on the bandwagon) so the big news will be the withdrawal from Iraq and possibly Afghanistan soon after if the economy doesn’t pull up. But there aren’t any smart liberal interventionists that I am aware of.
Matt’s right, you want someone who is smart and will make you better informed regardless of their politics, not someone who is just there to push your buttons. That gets old fast.
Actually either a smart liberal interventionist or a smart Obamabot who would cheerlead for Obama like the Putin youth groups in Russia cheer on Putin, who would make smart arguments against the bitchy-never satisfied Left, aka Greenwald, Judis, Krugman, etc.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
When I read Tyler Cowen’s skeptical notes on the stimulus, for example, I don’t become infuriated, I become better-informed about the issue.
But Cowen’s not a conservative at all. He’s a libertarian. Maybe a highly-skeptical-of-government libertarian would be a good choice to add to the Times’s columnist roster. You just wouldn’t be adding a conservative, that’s all. A Ross Douthat-style conservative would be a logical choice. The Times could frankly do a lot worse than Pat Buchanan.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Right wing wisdom makes me Y.A.W.N
Your Average Wingnut Non-sense. Doesn’t matter who writes it, and the bells and whistles attached. It is currently as irrelevant as Boehner’s fake tan and brilliant new plan for life saving tax cuts.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Chuck Norris. The only option.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
to balance Krugman and keep him a bit more honest.
How could he be more honest? Should he have said that maybe invading Iraq was not such a bad idea after all? That tax cuts for the rich may work? Or that torturing people to death is fine, and certainly not a crime?
Given the state of the current conservative/GOP mainstream values, I’m not sure the NYT needs to replace Kristol at all.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I can’t say that any conservative writer drives me crazy, it’s the thought that someone might listen to them that drives me crazy. Although I do have a problem with the “driving me crazy” concept. I’m already crazy, so to where are you driving me?
That said, conservatives need a William Buckley to bring them back to reality and focus their thoughts. There is no such person left alive. Pat Buchanan is probably the closest, and that’s a really scary thought (and ironic, given what Bill said about Pat). There are reasonable conservatives like Sullivan, but they are now called ‘liberals.’ Maybe Ross, but he’s pretty damn moderate. Joe the Plumber is probably the best choice to connect to the rank and file conservatives. Joe and the ranks share a similar intellectual capacity. But once you move up the intelligent people, there are no conservatives left who are both intelligent and sane. None at all.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
How about Rich Lowry? He is the only one from NR that has something to offer.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
“brilliant new plan for life saving tax cuts.”
Oh come on, tax cuts don’t just save lives. They regrow your hair, lower you cholesterol, give you an erection, take out the garbage, start your car when it’s cold, and keep the neighbor’s cat out of your yard. Among many other good things. Tax cuts can do everything! They are the warm and cuddly Teddy Bear that the GOP clings to at night.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I think Larison’s an excellent writer too, but there’s no chance in hell that the NYT hires a columnist who is not supportive of Israel, tends to give Russia the benefit of the doubt and thinks Lincoln was a bad President. Larison’s far too paleo and intellectual for this job – he probably infuriates the wing-nuts more than he does liberals. Chris Caldwell is an intelligent conservative voice that the right has seemingly somewhat marginalized over the last 7 years, I assume because he was not full throated enough in supporting the war. If the right wanted to reclaim any shreds of intellectual respectability they’d be running to people like Caldwell right now.
If the goal is just to piss off liberals, maybe the NYT can steal Jeff Jacoby from the Globe – he’s a perfect example of how low today’s conservative “thinkers” have sunk – the guy never has an original thought, consistently regurgitates the right-wing orthodoxy of the moment and seems more concerned with annoying liberals than making sense.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Thanks for flagging this MY. I thought the exact same thing when I read KDrum’s post. I like Kevin, but this is a great example of why cliches can be very bad: they can actually engender sloppy thinking. The ‘drive liberals crazy’ cliche is a value judgement. It assumes that there are obvious, sober, ‘grown-up’ truths just looming out there, the confrontation with which will drive liberals crazy. Since the modern GOP has – rhetorically anyway – basically ceded both liberalism, centerism and much of American conservatism to the Democrats and Independents, what’s needed more than anything is an ideological re-assesment, and that takes serious conservatives. Merely driving liberals crazy is not only useless, not only redundant, but deeply fatuous. In fact,there is a whole establishment of pseudo-liberals (e.g. Kaus, MoDo, Blue Dogs, etc.) already ‘in place’ which does a great job of driving liberals crazy. I’d rather argue (and learn from) a smart conservative than waste a minute with them, much less an ‘entertainment’ conservative who actually tries to drive liberals crazy. I mean, that would be Ann Coulter.
I wouldn’t put Kevin into the pseudo-liberal camp at all. He is a thoughtful guy, and essentially progressive. But he inadvertently displayed some pseudo-liberal-style cynicism (AKA political postmodernism) here. Very 90s.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Er, you guys do realize that Larison is very, very right-wing? A monarchist, I believe. I mean, _I_ like to read him, and fantasize about Russia launching a crusade to liberate Constantinople from the Turks, but I doubt that most of the hipsters would enjoy reading him. Larison thinks that today’s Republicans are too liberal, remember.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
What’s a conservative? It’s somebody who pisses liberal off. So I think MY missed the mark. Oh sure, I suppose he’s talking about the great sweep of Conservative thought from Burke to Kirk to Buckley to……….. ah, let me work on that.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
How could he be more honest? Should he have said that maybe invading Iraq was not such a bad idea after all? That tax cuts for the rich may work? Or that torturing people to death is fine, and certainly not a crime?
None of that has to do with honesty. The problem with Krugman is that he’s got a lot of economic credibility behind his name so when he writes things like (just from his last column):
and sandwiches this slightly absurd Democratic talking point between good wonky points about budget calculations and the limits of monetary policy, it comes across as “Economics believes this to be true” rather than “Partisan Democrat Paul Krugman believes this to be true.” I don’t believe he often (if ever) makes factually incorrect statements; I just believe he wields his academic expertise and profile carelessly in backing his policy preferences.
Matt, for example, has a number of times fallen hook, line, and sinker for this kind of jujitsu. Paul Krugman is a Nobel-winning economist. Paul Krugman believes we should do X to our economic policy. Ergo, we must do X!
A Mankiw, Glaeser, Feldstein, or someone else who understands all the relevant economics and can present an alternative viewpoint drawing on the relevant academic knowledge would be deeply valuable, precisely because so many of the most important issues of the current crisis are controversial even within the economic academy.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Nixon to China time— To prove that it won’t be swayed by its new Mexican billionaire investor, Steve Sailer.
After that ends badly for everyone involved (and Steve’s back here commenting regularly), The Times can hire Ross Douthat.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
What the NYT really needs is ME! ME! ME!
January 26th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Larison’s not going to be in consideration, for obvious reasons. The point made on the earlier thread applies here: the op-ed / editorial voice is being crafted to lure across WSJ readers, i.e libertarian free-market absolutism. That puts a self-promoting nothing like McArdle in line, since she’ll bring in all of her otaku followers.
I think the year of Kristol, and the election outcome, has finally broken the tie of that seat to William Safire: the well-connected conservative newsroom person. Since the next couple of years are really about how the right finds a new identity, the smart move would be to rotate the seat. Kristol’s role was as a band-leader, setting the week’s talking points every Monday. Who holds that role now?
January 26th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Why hire Steve Sailer when you can hire David Duke or Eric Rudolph? All the bigotry at half the price. Besides, they already demoted Sailer’s far-right pal, Tierney, from the editoral page to the Science pages.
McArdle is developmentally disabled, and a whiner. The Times already has one self-absorbed, dimwitted Irish spinster on its oped pages.
That leave Jamie Kirchick or John Podhoretz.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
The problem is that I can think of plenty of smart, challenging libertarians (Cowen et al.), plenty of smart, challenging social conservatives (Douthat, Larison), but I’m completely at a loss in coming up with a smart, challenging neocon/hawk columnist. Maybe that just reflects my bias. Or maybe while it makes sense to instinctively stand up for free markets or beloved tradition, it makes no sense to instinctively stand up for violence, and therefore you’re just not going to find any neocons who are “challenging” rather than “drives ya crazy”.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I’d read Larison, Douthat, Ponurru, Frum, Yuval Levin, etc. McCardle’s self-regard and condescension combined with her puddle-shallow, dilletantish understanding of economics (among other things) makes me crazy.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Or they could hold a reality TV / contest / game show, “Are You Wronger Than Bill Kristol!”
January 26th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
And by puddle-shallow, of course I mean puddle-deep. Nothing like f’ing up a figure of speech when you’re criticizing a writer.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
A. J. Bacevich is a genuine conservative with academic and military credentials and ties to The American Conservative and is always worth reading.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
but I’m completely at a loss in coming up with a smart, challenging neocon/hawk columnist.
Eli Lake is as close as I can come up with. The problem is that while he still blows a bunch of hot air about “Islamic supremacists” (which seems to cover everything from the PKK to AQ), reality seems to have bitten him in the ass regarding one-size-fits all beligerance about everything.
The immature, little asswipes who are loudly “conservatives” right now who are looking for a voice to keep beating on the foreign policy war drums about everything obviously don’t care about governing. They want government to provide them their missing manhood.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
PJ O’Rourke
January 26th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
OK, in all seriousness, gary rambo wins.
Bacevich would be a great example of what an *adult* conservative is.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I think looking at this from the standpoint of ideology is hopelessly wrongheaded. Continuing the tradition of recycling tired, old, but well connected idiots is the proper course to take. We need more dingbattery on the Times opinion pages, not less.
Barring that, I think Rod Stewart or Dolly Parton would add interesting insights into a number of pressing issues.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Maybe the Times could find a non-Krugman columnist who has actually accomplished something in his or her life. You know, a professor or businessman or soldier or astronaut or, hell, a really sure-handed dishwasher. In other words, an expert on something other than being a pundit.
Just think, if that were the criteria for writing an op-ed column, we might learn something by reading the Times editorial page.
Oh, to dream…
January 26th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Indeed, I wonder who is sending out the authoritative talking points–is anyone?
As best I can tell these guys
January 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I appreciate the post. The general point that reducing the level of discourse is not in itself a recommendation for a job in publishing is important.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I’m not exactly sure how they do it, but Bill Kristol was just the Times outlet for Republican talking points the same way Michael Gerson was/is the Washington Post’s outlet for Republican talking points. When Kristol was first hired to the Times, Jack Shafer of Slate insisted he would be an original voice. So for a month I read Kristol and Gerson. Both wrote the same column. I hope the Democrats never become this insular. The only thing either of these guys (Kristol & Gerson) knows is what they heard over the weekend at Georgetown parties.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Kevin Drum has posted an update with an attempt to recover from Matt’s criticism. Best I can say about it is “Nice try though”.
Cranky
January 26th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I think the only reasonable choice is K-Lo. I mean really, if you’re looking for someone to parrot talking points, who better?
In all seriousness, I like both Douthat and Ponnuru, but they’re both too similar to Brooks for them to occupy the same Op-Ed page with him (ditto Rehien, but I think it would be a hell of a leap of faith to put him on the NYT Op-Ed page from his occasional posting at TAS).
Larison would be great, giving voice to a segment of conservative opinion that is rarely heard from. Paleos like Buchanan, Steve Sailer and Derbyshire are all tainted by their racism/sexism/homophobia/anti-semitism, and so can’t effectively represent what is a significant strain in conservatism.
I like McCardle, but honestly, I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to make points in the length that an Op-Ed allows. She’s at her best when she’s unlimited by space, and going in-depth on something relatively technical.
Jim Manzi would be a good choice. He’s heavily empirical, which is a nice contrast to Brooks sociologically-driven observations.
Mark Steyn would also be a good choice. He’s a hell of a writer–though maybe a bit too snarky for the NYT– and while he’s a legitimate conservative, he’s not a total knuckle dragger.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
How about a “true conservative” who had the balls to challenge the hypocrisy of the bogus cult Bush/Cheney from a position of real conservatism.
Some of the strongest antiwar writing I have read over the last ten years came from Justin Raimondo over at Antiwar.com – somebody never linked to nor commented upon by any of these young Forbesian ‘Top Liberals’ like Matt, Josh or Ezra nor any of the clowns at the Weekly Standard or the Corner.
But no way he would ever get a job at the NYT. He calls it all into question and makes you really think about your (mine) own so-called liberal positions on both foreign and domestic policy. What he (they) call this American propensity for “warfare/welfare”. A “Republic not an Empire” etc. You know – that classic stuff. There was a reason Ron Paul was getting the biggest most resounding applause during the Republican debates – because he was the guy most consistent, the only guy making sense and the only one of that group that wasn’t a complete and total hypocrite. No wonder they had no idea what to make of him and so obviously just wanted him to go away.
Logical conservatism ultimately comes out against the Military Industrial Complex. It has to.
I think it was Andrew Sullivan who blogged yesterday that what has come to be known as ‘conservatism’ in America is really just the cultural and regional proclivities of the South – add to that since 9/11 – this Bush/Cheney cult of total world military domination – this American “unipolar moment” – “Project for a New American Century” stuff peddled to the public by the likes of the egregious Kristol. You know? All this shit that has been such a total failure and has gone a long way towards bankrupting the country – this shit that has more in common with the Soviet Union than ‘classic liberalism’ – which is what we should be thinking about when we think about ‘conservatism’.
“Neo-conservatism” has its roots in “Trotskyism” – this should never be forgotten.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
The problem with Mickey Kaus is that he seems to be functionally illiterate… or maybe just a dedicated devotee of stream of consciousness.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
> Logical conservatism ultimately comes out
> against the Military Industrial Complex. It has to.
Well, not since 1979. But I am sure enlightenment is right around the corner (no pun intended).
After every major Republican mess-up and electoral loss the “read conservatives” get together and explain why Failed Officeholder X was not a “real conservative”. Problem is they just keep electing the darn imposters.
Cranky
January 26th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Hey, Hector–I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m certainly not saying I _agree_ with Larison (at least not on everything–he’s absolutely right that we’ve already pushed NATO expansion much too far, and Ukraine/Georgia are purest lunacy). The point is that he’s not just some cultist spouting the latest talking points. He’s not self-evidently absurd–you have to employ _reason_ against him; ridicule isn’t enough. When he doesn’t change your mind, you feel that much sharper for having dealt with serious arguments against your position.
That’s a conservatism I can respect.
January 26th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Kevin Phillips, perhaps? He was suggested by a few friends of mine when we had this same discussion and his blog posts at HuffPo have seemed thoughtfully conservative.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
When Kristol was first hired to the Times, Jack Shafer of Slate insisted he would be an original voice.
That’s just deluded. The Monday column was basically a party memo, designed to dump the talking points into the cablenews drinking water for the week, and the other column was either filler or a booster dose.
The NYT won’t hire paleocons. They don’t go well with the product. And it’s not just the whole ‘insufficient enthusiasm towards whatever Israel does’ thing. Imagine Bacevich writing against consumerist nonsense, and then trying to sell the usual NYT ad spreads for designer shit. Much better to have a Manhattan Institute free-market fundamentalist or someone like Brooks whose schtick is ‘you are what you buy’.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
ah, cut the crap, matt, et al:
first off mickey kraus is a wanker of the most onanistic order. i have a hard time believing even he has the strength of his idiosyncratic, if not simply idiotic, convictions.
although lately i have been questioning the degree to which drum has lost his edge — he used to be good, really! — his proposition is not all that complicated, nuanced, controversial, or insightful.
clearly a conservative writer of bill buckley’s stature and heft would be an appropriate element of the nyt’s op ed page. the problem is that he’s sort of deceased at the moment, and another conservative writer with lucidity and coherence on a par with buckley’s has yet to make a name for her/himself.
would that s/he did. someone capable of framing an argument into which one could really sink the teeth would be most welcome. by the by, it’s definitely not andy sullivan who irreparably squandered his flimsy credibility capital playing cheerleader to the bush whitehouse and the iraq war for far too many years before his conversion to obamaism.
keep you eyes and ears open for a writer with the chops for articulating an intelligent and authentically conservative p.o.v.
if i find one first, i’ll let you know.
odd thought: should bloggers have expiration dates? without exception, the ones that captured one’s admiration a half dozen years ago have, to man, drifted into a self-indulgent fog. perhaps they need to be pulled from the shelves of the internet supermarket?
January 27th, 2009 at 12:21 am
David Brooks? At least Kristol isn’t a prissy, dour, four-eyed, dandruff-ridden pseudo-Talmudic putz. At least Kristol was cheery. If it’s got to be a consrvative – How about a non-neocon chickenhawk Jew conservative? Wouldn’t that be nice?
January 27th, 2009 at 1:41 am
PJ O Rourke and Ross Douchebag are self-important idiots who still go on about how military people love Republicans more ergo we should all vote Republican. My choice would be Bacevich or Larison, esp. the former.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:25 am
capn america, i believe that that’s ross douchetwat not douchebag you mean to refer to …
January 27th, 2009 at 4:40 am
Call me crazy if you will, but I think it would be nice to have another NYT columnist aligned with rather than against the strong majority of the American people. This seems like the kind of thing they could even review a couple of years: look at what’s polling and getting voted on as important, and find someone who writes well and interestingly about it, explaining the complications facing projects the public supports but from the viewpoint of someone who wants them to succeed rather than fail.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:47 am
A guy like Larison probably represents what the Conservative movement needs–he arrives at his stands more through reason than dogma, and plainly hates the slogan-chanting cult that modern American conservatism has become.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am
well, that’s pretty much exactly what I would expect from Kevin Drum. there has never been a right-wing meme about liberals that he didn’t immediately latch onto and internalize. he is a classic example of a ’scared liberal’. its not that he has principles he’s afraid to uphold because he’s embarrassed by being ‘on the left’, he doesn’t really seem to. really he’s just not very bright, and tends to just fully believe the last thing he was told, whatever it was.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:42 am
this situation does nicely illustrate how out of steam the repugs are though. I don’t think the times needs to go out and find a conservative just for the sake of having a conservative who will do nothing, nothing, except regurgitate tired, discredited disinformation.
shouldn’t they focus on finding someone insightful and who writes well, more than filling some empty slot on the ideological spectrum? Times readers aren’t idiots, they don’t need to be spoon-fed bullshit from the Republican PR factory. that’s why Kristol was a disgrace as a presence at the times – he is not a good writer, an insightful thinker, or a serious student of policy. he is none of these things, although he gets credit for them all the time. he is just a rabid, unshakeable Bush-lover. he has no ‘perspective’ other than that. since he never wrote a column that was well-researched, well-written, well-argued, or which contained any useful or original information, he can be called an abject failure as a columnist. why just shuffle some clone of him into place, instead of just trying to improve the roster of columnists?
January 27th, 2009 at 10:38 am
*crosses fingers* please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle. please not megan mcardle.
January 27th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Why is it a given that there must be a slot for conservatives, when actual honest to god liberal left progressives are absolutely shut out? Krugman’s great, but “liberal”? He’s sensible, is that what makes him liberal? Is Dowd liberal?
I guess Herbert, but he’s rather dull and depressing.
For all the chatter about “the left”, and how the NYT is supposedly “liberal”, actual progressive voices are absent- from the Sunday chat shows and from the NYT op ed page. But of course, we must make room for some disastrously wrong conservative. Or they’ll have a tantrum, I guess. Hm.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Seriously, why *does* the NYT need another conservative OpEd voice? They’ve already got Brooks and Friedman and Dowd… (what you say Friedman and Dowd are liberal? Not likely even compared to the median US voter in 2008, much less any consistent ideological measure.)
Instead, they should hire someone like Naomi Klein, left enough to give centrist liberals fits from the left from time to time.
(If they *must* hire a conservative or libertarian, please let them pull Tierney back from polluting the ScienceTimes any longer. Some people prefer science articles *without* two heaping scoops of conservative ideology.)
January 27th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I think it would make these guys’ heads asplode if the NYT hired Mickey Kaus.
January 27th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
why *does* the NYT need another conservative OpEd voice?
The argument used to be that they needed someone to fill Safire’s seat, but right now I’m not sure if anyone fits that description, or whether the role Safire played even exists. It’s not as if they can poach George Will.
January 27th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Mark Steyn would also be a good choice. He’s a hell of a writer–though maybe a bit too snarky for the NYT– and while he’s a legitimate conservative, he’s not a total knuckle dragger.
Yes, he is. And he’s a dishonest racist closet case to boot. Doesn’t get much worse than Steyn. Even Mankin has a few principles.
The lack of love for Caldwell just shows how blogocentric this conversation is. Do any of you actually read newspapers or magazines?
January 28th, 2009 at 8:13 am
What’s a “newspaper”?
January 28th, 2009 at 9:06 am
We’re WINNING!
January 28th, 2009 at 10:32 am
And when you say “liberals”, you mean people that read. A very liberal activity.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
The “drives liberals crazy” thing is just another bit of right-wing projection. When a liberal policy wonk gives a thorough analysis of why their idea is the best, the right wing response is to call them a fag and a traitor and a commie and call for their murder. Thus they assume that liberals respond the same way to genuine rightist ideas and arguments, when really, if those arguments are actually made, liberals think about them and discuss them a lot.
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