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More links, less chatter

by Mark Gisleson

E.J. Dionne Jr. writes about "Anti-Bush Moderates" today in his WaPost column. Dionne is one of the most readable of Leonard Downie's increasingly conservative op-ed team members, and he offers a solid analysis of the Democrats today:

The analytical mistake is to assume that the anti-Bush feeling, which is there, leads straight to the fever swamps of radicalism. In fact, the dislike of Bush among Democrats is more personal and partisan than it is ideological. Democrats are not, in fact, moving to the far left.

This explains why retired Gen. Wesley Clark could jump so quickly in the polls -- witness his top billing in this week's Newsweek survey of Democrats. Clark has won support from figures as diverse as Michael Moore, the angry, irreverent anti-corporate filmmaker, and Mickey Kantor, the smooth, resolutely pro-business Democratic insider. To beat Bush, they are willing to back a general whose views on many issues are unknown -- and who appears to have voted for Ronald Reagan. Whether they are right or wrong about Clark, pure ideologues don't do stuff like that. They back Dennis Kucinich.

Dionne's stablemate Richard Cohen continues his descent into near incoherency today, inexplicably contrasting Wesley Clark with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, Michael Bloomberg and Jesse Ventura. As TCB, the "author" of Babelogue's front page blog, the first thing I do every morning is pull together quotes and blurbs about other blogs and then string them together to form a semi-coherent general blog. To do so I use trickery, allusions, nonsequiturs and a host of other literary tricks to bring order to unrelated items. I don't do that in this weblog because politics is a bit more complicated than that.

Even when posting dozens of links at Bush Wars I present them in sequential order, only tying links together when they share a common theme or if they present an interesting conflict of views. Cohen's effort to link an actor, social activist, billionaire and ex-"jock" turned professional celebrity with a four-star general pretty much collapses under its own weight when you stop to consider the politics involved in being a military administrator.

Just so you don't think I'm too hard on Cohen, here's what a real media whore has to say about Clark.

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Moja Vera is back home, and he promises to post more about that later.

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Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is must reading today. A .pdf of Dick Cheney's Public Financial Disclosure Report, an assessment of Clark's truthfulness, and part II of his interview with former Ambassodor Joseph Wilson. [Part I]

Hesiod reports that the Iraq Governing Council is planning to ban al-Jazeerah and al-Aribaya from their borders.

Senator Clinton went after Bush recently. Good reading. Just to keep you up to date, the latest groundless speculation concerning Hillary is that Clark would appoint her to be Attorney General in his administration, charging her with undoing the damage done to Ashcroft. That's a scenario I'd hate to see happen, and I attribute it to a deep-seated wish for retribution. Getting back to my recent moderate theme, I don't think that's a good idea. "Borking" the right for what they've done to this country would be like a second Civil War. It's going to take years to recondition the country away from the right's favorite tropes: fear, and more fear.

A hostage situation in Saudi Arabia seems to have been resolved. I'm tempted to start a quick pool to see how long it takes for someone to call it the Saudi Waco.

Posted by Steve Perry at September 23, 2003 10:46 AM

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