07
Jan
The comedy stylings of Bill Kristol
As many of you already know, Weakly Standard editor Bill Kristol recently outperformed the 1918 influenza virus in auditions to win a New York Times opinion column. He put his new platform to good use today by innoculating Republicans to the possibility that Mike Huckabee could actually win the GOP presidential nomination.
Kristol was watching the most recent GOP debate from the New Hampshire vacation retreat of Tom Friedman’s taxi driver, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Huckabee is a regular joe, maybe even a lovable schmoe. He plays the bass, and he plays the base, and, well, golly. Gosh.
Kristol isn’t ready to endorse Huckabee—actually he can’t because it’s against the paper’s policy, but presumably it’s also against the paper’s policy to misattribute quotes, and he blew right past that barrier, so stay tuned—but he apparently thinks Huckabee has enough of a shot at the nomination that it’s maybe unwise to continue the assault begun by Ann Coulter, Rich Lowry and others from the dope-smoking urban smartass wing of the party.
The funniest part of the column is Kristol’s casual dismissal of the eight years Republicans have spent trying to portray George Bush as a salt of the earth guy rising magnificently to unforseeable challenges. “After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy.”
Kristol, it’s true, never really liked Bush—he fancied McCain in 2000—but still, ignoring the effort that his friends and collegues put into contrasting Bush’s alleged everyday guy-ness with Gore’s and Kerry’s alleged blueblooded snobbery seems at least disingenuous if not downright cruel.
Huckabee’s assurance on social conservative red-meat issues, says Kristol, is all of a piece with what got the GOP to the top of the political heap. What he seems to be indicating—and he may be on to something—is that it really doesn’t matter how weak Huckabee is on actual policy, foreign or domestic, because Republicans ultimately aren’t going to elect anyone on policy. What difference does it make what Huckabee says about this or that, when the odds are that none of it will happen anyway? Just get someone elected and go from there.
Kristol concludes with some ominous muttering about the danger Huckabee poses to Democrats; he might, for instance, provoke Michael Bloomberg into running. (As if there’s anything that might not provoke Michael Bloomberg into running.) And you can picture Kristol speaking through a thin smile, without moving his lips, as he says, commenting on the degree to which Republicans underestimated Huckabee, that “it would be amusing if Democrats made the same mistake in 2008.”
All in all, a somewhat inauspicious start to Kristol’s Times career, something like taking the new car out for a test drive only to find that one of the wheels has gone square and makes a horrible thumping sound every time it spins.
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It also reinforces my belief that whoever the Democrats nominate, we can’t do worse than those folks. I realize that’s a pretty low bar.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pmYeah, but that goes to my point, too: what better time to push the envelope than when the opposition is fubar. We’re in a vastly stupid war, the economy is tanking, incomes are flat, health care costs are up, energy and food are up, income inequality is waaaaaaay up and all but one of the GOPers are on the wrong side of every single issue. Short of an actual depression, what more fertile ground could a progressive politician ask for? If you can’t come up with a progressive agenda under these conditions, against these opponents, well, what the hell good are you?
Re the defense thing from the other thread: it’s one thing to promise to rebuild the ground forces, but this is rebuilding them and then enlarging them by nearly 20%. And where you have more people, you need more air support and more artillery, more guns, more vehicles, etc … it’s an expensive proposition. Not as expensive as occupying Iraq, but you’re still looking at several hundred billion dollars for the expansion, and then some smaller but still considerable additional annual expense to maintain it. And there’s that nagging question of what he plans to do with all those extra people, since presumably he won’t have 200,000 troops tied down in Iraq and Kuwait.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:26 pmIn general, I don’t disagree but also think Obama is advancing a progressive agenda. I don’t think that a think tank presentation on each item is an effective way to campaign, however. If he can continue to generate enthusiasm with “the vision thing”, more power to him. Considering the difficulty he is going to have with the Congress if he gets elected, he is going to need as much emotional power from the electorate as he can muster in order to get anything done.
On the defense issue, I can only reiterate what I said, that any perceived weakness on defense will hurt any Democrat’s prospects severely. Hillary isn’t wrong about that. She’s just wrong as to what it takes to look strong. I really don’t think any successful candidate can advocate cutting the missile defense type stuff and not buttressing the conventional force at the same time. I don’t want them pounding other people’s ground either but I think Americans at large believe we need the capacity to do so should the need arise. There’s lots of room to debate what constitutes need but the criticism of the Bushies for biting off more than they can chew will hang over a candidate wanting to reduce the conventional force.
For example, should the country feel the need to attempt to stop genocide, to buttress international peace keeping forces, or to intensify engagement with the Taliban, the capacity needs to be there and I think that’s the way most voters will look at it. Getting out of Iraq is something everyone seems to want but not because they have been converted to pacifism.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pmFOX & Friends” gang the Most biased clueless political team on TV- Next to the old cronie Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Biggest IDIOT in the news goes to Bill Kristol! Who said this guy knows anything about voters; he gives gay people a bad name? Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Bill Kristol and Nina Easton ALL looked like deer in the head lights all night! Could not think of anything to say on camera. Since they were proven they did not have a clue!!! We laughed at FOX trying to keep talking about republican race that ended 15 min after the polls closed.
Clueless-EASTON: She’s not going to pull it out here. WRONG
Clueless-KRISTOL: She has lost the first two states, it looks like, and I think she’ll lose the next couple. WRONG
Clueless-Barnes: She’s the problem, that’s what people don’t like. They don’t like her. They don’t trust her. WRONG
January 9th, 2008 at 4:07 am