If Only It Had Been Crazy
I can’t believe this paragraph actually made it to publication:
Nor are Democrats strangers to having their crazy uncles take center stage. During the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and David Bonior (D-Mich.) famously flew to Baghdad, where McDermott asserted that he believed the president would “mislead the American public” to justify the war. The trip made it a cakewalk for critics to describe the Democratic Party as chockablock with traitorous radicals.
Even in retrospect, going to Baghdad was a terrible PR strategy. And I’ll admit to being among those who, at the time, thought those three were crazy uncles. But guess what: I was totally wrong and the President really was misleading the American public to justify the war. Jim McDermott was totally right! Are we seriously still mocking him, seven years later, for having issued an accurate warning at a time when doing so was politically unpopular?
39 Responses to “If Only It Had Been Crazy”
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September 13th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
of course we are.
our media is a farce.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Politico is such an incredible joke.
Not a new statement, it just bears repeating very often. They are to false equivalencies what McArdle is to Democrat concern trolling.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Who is this “we” you are talking about, Villager?
You are the one who linked to Politico, a site I never have visited once.
Paul Rosenberg at Open Left was very good on the Maddow interview.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Why is it I didn’t even have to click on the link before knowing that quote came from a Politico article?
September 13th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I’m mystified by people who do not understand the difference between politicians breaking all historic protocol to heckle the President with lies versus politicians following established political norms to tell the truth.
Freaking insane.
September 13th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
This sort of reminds me of the whole “yeah ok, the Bush admin really did use the terror alert levels for political purposes but the media was still right to bash the “crazies” on the left when they tried to point it out a few years ago” post by Mark Ambinder…
September 13th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
McDermott is a modern premature anti-facist.
I’m surprised he kept his seat. In politics being right too soon is a far worse sin than being wrong with everybody else.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Are we seriously still mocking him, seven years later, for having issued an accurate warning at a time when doing so was politically unpopular?
Of course. Just like we’re still dismissing George McGovern almost forty years later for being right about Vietnam.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
To be fair, Matt Y tends to get a whole lot of things wrong.
“We” aren’t doing much of anything. The degree to which the media is just clueless and out of touch is shocking, really. They can’t possibly not know it at this point, the only realistic possibility is that they are denying reality in the hopes of convincing us that up is down.
They are making shit up and trying to brow-beat everyone else into going along with them. There’s a reason reporters have similar favorable ratings as lawyers and child molestors.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I’m surprised he kept his seat.
McDermott doesn’t campaign much, rarely visits his district instead focusing most of his time and attention on actual policy.
As a result he squeaked by in 2008 with only 83.8% of the vote. In 2002 in the midst of the frenzy of the run up to war his typical margin slipped and he only got 74.07% of the vote. The reputation for Seattle being a liberal city is somewhat overstated, but that part of it represented by Jim is about as liberal as anything outside SF, Berkeley or the People’s Republic of Santa Monica.
Going to Baghdad required a lot of personal and political courage on McDermott’s part but posed no actual risk to his reelection.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
McDermott kept his seat because many of his constituents here in Seattle knew he was right at the time, and proudly remember that he tried to stop the fiasco we saw coming. Conventional wisdom hereabouts is that he has the seat as long as he wants it, for being on the correct side of that and many other issues. But we’re a bunch of DFH out here, so what do we know?
September 13th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
McDermott is hugely popular in his district, which includes Seattle. His anti-war stance was in step with his constituents. He could wear a clown suit to work every day and still get re-elected.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
And of course the irony is that ‘Crazy’ Jim is a psychiatrist.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Yes, Matt, that is exactly what they’re saying.
And if they were to answer your question directly, they would simply say, “Oh, we’re not passing judgment on whether they were right or wrong, just with how it was used politically at the time.”
Today’s media only cares about “optics,” “narratives” and who “won” the day. Their job is to analyze everything not in terms of actual real-world impact but in terms of how it all reads and sounds in their own newspapers and teevee programs. They give us a self-perpetuating meta “take” on how something is “playing,” and that’s about it. It’s national media as VH1 “Best Week Ever.”
So of course it’s perfectly fair to denigrate McDermott and company that way–viewed in terms of how it “played” back in the pre-war days, they’re exactly right. Anything deeper than that, like facts, is beyond their concern.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
People who are surprised that McDermott didn’t lose his seat probably don’t know much about how these things work. When the national media attacks a local politician, the locals will instinctively rally around him. Even if his negatives go up, and his positives go down, his supporters and anybody who has local pride will rally around that politician like he’s abriham fucking lincoln.
These politicians don’t keep getting reelected because locals are morons. They keep getting reelected because the locals feel as if their area has been picked out for ridicule. Only if the politicians presence makes a significant impact in the districts funding or business dollars will locals likely feel enough of a pinch to boot them. Given instances that actually do disgust the locals, they will act. But in instances that are mostly partisan in nature, even if actual crimes or sins were comitted, you’ll just as likely help the politician as hurt them by making them targets.
Think of how your average American reacts when foriegners attack our President. It’s the same dynamic. For a lot of people, Patriotism extends to their local district, town, City, and often even State or region. Powerful local interests can get rid of a local politician, but national media really doesn’t have that power.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I do believe I mispelled Abraham. I could give a fuck less about the case, but that’s just rude.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Bonior was right. But he was politically inept. His correct message, as a political matter, was pretty much wholly undercut by his decision to fly to a hostile foreign capital to deliver it. If he’d stayed in Washington and banged on his desk in front of the cameras (or made a stand at the White House gate or what have you), he’d be better off. You’ve got to play your position, even when you’re right.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Outside the bubble Matt it is still not accepted wisdom
that BushCheney lied America into Iraq.
The public’s objection to the war is that it goes on too long and costs too much, not that they, the people, were suckered into the thing.
The only thing Americans like less than being played for chumps is admitting that they are chumps.
As to the Uncles being Crazy it turns less on their being “right” than their being so wrong in, as the currency goes, the optics.
Turning themselves into latter day Tokyo Roses was no way to fend off the storm and if anything was massively damaging to the antiwar position.
They were acting out as Crazy Uncles.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
ChooChoo, maybe in Oklahoma. In the areas of the country where people actually live, Bush is a scumbag who lied about everything and ran the country into the ground. Opinions on Iraq are still frequently racist, and people are indeed primarily pissed that the war went on too long. However, they still do know GWB lied and do actually dislike him for it. They probably wouldn’t have cared if the war had been over in 3 months, but that’s not how it happened.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Southpaw, I’m not sure what politically inept means in this case. There was nothing he could have done to to stop the war, Bush had made up his mind and Republicans controlled congress. He was always going to be safe in his district. Democrats were demoralized (and not because the left was too strident) and Republicans were energized (They do love killing people, after all.), so 2002 was a foregone conclusion.
Politically, this was an irrelevant sideshow that entertained the the elite and enrages some portion of the country temporarily. Liberals really need to learn the difference between things that embarass them and things that hurt them. Do you actually think Republicans aren’t embarassed by their whackadoodle activities? Sure they are, the politicians anyway. The base loves it, Liberals hate it, and nobody else will care in a couple of weeks.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
The basic Bullshittico position is that the Iraq War was justified because they got to snigger at anti-war protestors.
They give us a self-perpetuating meta “take” on how something is “playing,” and that’s about it. It’s national media as VH1 “Best Week Ever.”
I can’t wait for Jim Vanderhei to show up on “I Love… The Iraq War” doing snarky insets.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Sorry soullite but I’m not in Oklahoma.
Outside the Left I’m afraid you’ll find that Americans
accept the “everyone thought…” meme. Of course the MSM work hard at maintaining the lie. That is exactly why there is no real movement to hold BushCheney & Co. to account.
But twas ever thus.
Every successful politician will tell you that you must never ever tell the people that they were wrong.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I read the Politico article as deliberately ironic.
Here’s how I see it working. The author knows that, to write a Politico article, she needs to balance Joe Wilson with a Democratic crazy uncle in order to create a “false equivalence.”
But she hates Roger Simon, and hate having to construct false equivalences. So she puts a poison pill in, by deliberately choosing an example where the so-called “Democratic crazy uncle” was right. The decision to put “mislead the American public” in quotation marks is the tell. Because, come on, everyone now knows that was true.
I seriously think this is deliberate irony, and it puzzles me that no one is getting it.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I love it when they lie to themselves. This willful self-delusion is a big part of why the Republican Party became the powerhouse it is today.
You know what else? Real Americans love Sarah Palin. Love here.
Conservatives are the Iraqi Sunnis of American politics. They’ve spent years being told that they are much more numerous than they actually are, and that they are the only true expression of their nation’s identity. They believe it because it’s made them feel good to believe it, and it’s going to take a pretty brutal series of ass-kickings over a number of years for them to let go of their pretty delusion.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Well, Americans neither accept nor reject the “everyone thought” meme because that was never what the war was for (to most of them). It was really all about killing random Arabs so we could feel badass again after the humiliation (that’s how the rednecks saw it) of 9/11.
But Choochoo is exactly right about why the public soured on the war–not because they were sold a false bill of goods, but because the fun killing and destroying part was over, so wtf were we still doing there?
Maybe a few people were smart enough to learn, belatedly, that you can’t have a big shock and awe party without a hella cleanup afterward, and have since repented of supporting the war. But I’m guessing that’s no more than 5% of the voters. That’s enough to swing an election these days, but a pretty small sliver if you are trying to gauge the American character at a more basic level.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Sorry joe but I think you’ll find most polls show less than 1/4 of Americans agree that Bush lied about WMD and well over half will say that they think Bush honestly believed his bs.
About Palin I have no idea but I suspect less than a quarter of Americans think well of her.
That you conflate the two questions and think that yields meaning simply shows your rather too narrow partisan view.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Sorry joe but I think you’ll find most polls show less than 1/4 of Americans agree that Bush lied about WMD and well over half will say that they think Bush honestly believed his bs.
Got a link?
September 13th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
The Politico is really The Republican-O.
Repeat mantra as needed.
This is all you need to know to understand/parse ANY Politico story.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Flying to Baghdad to make the announcement is still crazy. I have no desire to see us strike Iran, but if a politician flew to Tehran to make that point, I’d think he was crazy too.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I gotta link
USA Today/Gallup Poll. Feb. 21-24, 2008. N=2,021 adults nationwide. MoE ± 2.
“Do you think the Bush Administration deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or not?”
Did mislead 53%
Did not mislead42%
Tracks nicely with the election results from November.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Should have stopped there.
Let the word go forth that location of the bubble, and the nature of its inhabitants, has now been established.
Sorry Choochoo.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Apparently not. So, what do the actual results of the poll, and the contrast with your assumptions about public opinion, indicate about your rather too narrow partisan view?
September 13th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Sarah Paling poll results here.
High 30s overall, about 80 among Republicans.
September 13th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
ChooChoo! will never be back unless it’s Mixner burning up psuedonyms by being wrong about things and not wanting to own up to it.
September 13th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Oddly, If I was putting forth an opinion about Bush’s deliberate mendacity I’d say he believed all his garbage and felt justified in playing fast and loose with “evidence” that fit into the long, tortured, conspiracy theory that grew up in Foreign Policy circles regarding Iraq from ‘91 to 2003. It was a sorry, bipartisan affair, where people had to prove their “seriousness” as Mandarins by advocating some blooding once in awhile for those who were disrespectful to the hegemon.
September 13th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Correct, Ed.
I’d bet my last dollar that the words “Nobody’s going to care when we win,” passed Dick Cheney’s lips in the months before the Iraq War began.
September 13th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
If I was putting forth an opinion about Bush’s deliberate mendacity I’d say he believed all his garbage and felt justified in playing fast and loose with “evidence” that fit into the long, tortured, conspiracy theory that grew up in Foreign Policy circles regarding Iraq from ‘91 to 2003. It was a sorry, bipartisan affair, where people had to prove their “seriousness” as Mandarins by advocating some blooding once in awhile for those who were disrespectful to the hegemon.
And the thing is, outside US foreign policy circles, there was broad skepticism that the Iraq had any serious WMD. Among the doubters were the Prime Minister of Canada who was widely mocked for telling George Stephanapolous that Saddam Hussein wasn’t a threat. I remember quite clearly the smugness with which Stephanapolous, Condi Rice, and others dismissed him–like he was some kind of provincial bumpkin who didn’t know any better. But it was surprising to see even Bush skeptics like Yglesias sucked in when merely tuning into the BBC or CBC for a week might have lifted the veil. I also remember the edge of absurdism in the voice of mainstream anchors like CBC’s Peter Mansbridge when reporting on the bafflingly insular foreign policy consensus in the US and just how shakey was the so-called casus beli to which no one in the American media payed the slightest scrutiny.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Oh, I remember the BBC from the time and when Tony Blair signed on, you didn’t hear much disagreement from them. They were at damn near FOX level idiocy in the early after invasion. There is a scene in “Control Room” that shows some moron with a bunch of Shiite children from Iraq and the BBC rep telling you that they are praising Bush for removing Saddam. What they are saying in Arabic is “God Damn Bush”.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
‘totally wrong’ and ‘totally right!’
I’m getting really bugged with the use of the word ‘totally’ instead of ‘completely’. I mean really. Which sounds better?
completely wrong (adult)
totally wrong (pre teen)