Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Washington Post Edition)

Q: Is there any level of stupidity which a Washington Post time-server's column can sink that will get it pulled from the morning paper?

A: No, as Richard Cohen's column this morning demonstrates.

Five years, Washington Post, five years unless you repent.

New Pairodimes makes the catch:

New Pairodimes: Richard Cohen of the Washington Post today has topped himself. By topping, I mean bottomed out. But in Cohen's world words are malleable. If you want to, you can just make s--- up, and still get paid as an expert.

Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.

Neo-Liberal must mean something like a liberal. Let's call Bush that and see if it flies. He is at 30% in the polls. Conservatives will appreciate not being tainted with him, and it will make liberals mad at me!

You recoil, I know. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents, an advocate of limited government, minimal taxes and, when it comes to the quintessentially liberal concern with civil liberties, the man who gave us the twin black eyes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It's an appalling record.

It's a liberal abuse of power. See where I am going with this? No? Well neither do I!...

[L]et's take a look at the much-mocked notion of diversity. Bill Clinton was widely berated for his effort to have an administration that looked like America -- women, African Americans, Hispanics, you name it. Whether by design or not, Bush has also managed that feat. A female education secretary is one thing, but a national security adviser -- the uber-macho post -- is something else, and that went first to Condi Rice. And over at Justice, Bush chose Alberto Gonzales, the son of Hispanic migrant workers and, incidentally, a lawyer with the singular gift of forgetting meetings he attended. (In private practice, did he forget to bill?)... I am not suggesting that any of these appointees -- including Bush's former White House counsel, Harriet Miers -- are what is pejoratively known as affirmative action hires. I am suggesting, though, that Bush has not only diversified his Cabinet and staff but obviously got enormous satisfaction in doing so. You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment -- or his frequent mention of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a "mushy-headed liberal."... Allow me to make the case that this is also true when it comes to Iraq. I acknowledge that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed. But... one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis.... Bush's neoliberal instincts have come a cropper across the board. His appointees have too often been incompetent, and his well-intentioned education act is underfunded. But it is with Iraq that real and long-term damage has been done. For years to come, his war will be cited to smother any liberal impulse in American foreign policy -- to further discredit John F. Kennedy's vow to "pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty." We shall revert to this thing called "realism," which is heartless and cynical, no matter what its other virtues. The debacle of Iraq has cost us -- and others -- plenty in lives. But in the end, it will cost us our soul as well...

If anybody is interested, Richard Cohen could have discovered in less than two minutes that the term "neoliberalism" was coined to describe the Washington Monthly's Charlie Peters and his posse, who wanted a reality-based liberalism, an effective liberalism, a liberalism that sought truth from facts and that proposed policies not because they resonated with a liberal interest group but because they were good for the country and the world. See Ezra Klein and Charlie Peters.

Five years, Washington Post. Five years.

Comments

[Barkley Rosser]

Well, Cohen's column is shockingly stupid and ignorant, but that does not mean that the issue of the origins and meaning of the term "neoliberal" are not murky or controversial, and that indeed the term may apply to Bush may be true, although for very different reasons than the ones Cohen was providing.

I did not get much sleep last night, so should probably not be commenting on this, but I think it was over at maxspeak (it was definitely somewhere, and I don't think here) awhile ago that this business of the origins and meaning of term "neoliberal" came up. I gave the argument that you just gave, Brad, that it was invented by Charles Peters, and that it therefore drifted into identifying a group, the New Dems, with which your guy Bill Clinton and some around him were identified with, pro-free trade and some other standard economics views, with more standard "liberal" in the US sense views on social policy and some other things.

I was disabused of this by some commenters and sent to go googling and Wikipediaing. Indeed, the term was used much earlier than Peters, dating from the early 1950s in France and Latin America and in poli sci articles in the US from at least the mid-1960s. Peters was making up his own meaning for a term that was already out there, with the usage in Latin America being the most consistent and longest lasting.

That original meaning from the 1950s, which has persisted in many places unabated, referred to the Mont Pelerin Society and its allies, people like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek very specifically and explicitly, who revived a "classical liberalism" in the wake of WW II as part of an anti-Soviet Cold War strategy, and which was not at all like the more middle-of-the-road neoliberalism of Charles Peters and his followers.

Thus, when one sees Latin Americans pointing to Pinochet as a "neoliberal," backed by the "neoliberalism" of Nixon, and supported indeed by the old original "neoliberals" Friedman and Hayek themselves, this is not baloney and no laughing matter. From this very Latin perspective, "neoliberalism" is just pro-free market laissez-faire policies associated with global domination by the US and its companies, and has been a consistent policy of the US government, especially by right-wing US governments, who just happen to be labeled "conservative" within the context of US politics.

Thus, indeed, George W. Bush is a real neoliberal, but not because he is all soft and mushy over immigrants or Harriet Miers, but because he has been a hardline supporter of US corporations and traditional US power prerogatives in economics in Latin America.

[Hederman]

I certainly hope Brad is shorting WaPo stock given his strident belief in the demise of the newspaper. Granted the newspaper is only part of the Post enterprise, but it's the flagship of the stock.

A comparison between the fortunes of the Post, WSJ and NY Times would be interesting if we believe that editorial pages and reporting leads to prosperity for said journalistic enterprise.

[Lee A. Arnold]

This is not born of stupidity. Cohen is promoting the only viable Republican strategy. The only chance they have at the White House in 2008 is to run against their own President.

Relabeling Bush is necessary, and it is merely the beginning. They must try to convince the independents that if they vote Democrat, they will get another Bushlike, big-spending, crooked administration.

Please read Jeffrey Goldberg's very interesting New Yorker article on the current status of the Republican implosion. In it, Gingrich notes that Sarkozy just pulled off a similar trick in France:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/04/070604fa_fact_goldberg?printable=true

[kaleberg]

You've been doing this Washington Post, five years thing for a few months now. Shouldn't it be: the Washington Post, I give it four years, nine months? Personally, I think the Washington Post is dead now. It's sort of a zombie Post.

But do you really want some asshole blogger naming a time unit after you? I mean, five years = 1 DeLong. How about a little Washington Post countdown timer in one of your side columns? You could put in a little Friedman unit/troop death timer alongside it.

I mean this constructively. I expect that in four years, nine months or so, the Washington Post will have lost 90% of its circulation. Someone will notice that the zombie has no pulse and has been eating people's brains. To mix a few metaphors, that's when we'll hear the cry, "to the windmill!"

[ThresherK]

"I am not suggesting that any of these appointees -- including Bush's former White House counsel, Harriet Miers -- are what is pejoratively known as affirmative action hires."

Neither am I. I'm just wondering if these Peter Principle rejects are literally the best Republicans available among people GWB would nominate. Can this idea, even just a possibility of it, be so obvious to me and not to Big Name Columnist?

That's why every time some appointee gets run out due to their incompetence we get two years of their understudy, and amazingly end up missing the original.

[wood turtle]

Let's see now- "mushy-headed liberal."

Yes I think that is scientifically correct. The brain plates of the liberal do not quite grow together, whereas in the conservative they are hardened completely.

Make of that what you will.

[Maynard Handley]

I hear Bush is also a Christian.
Perhaps Richard Cohen wants to make a big deal out of that, since we're discussing labels?

[Gilbert and Sullivan]

I oftern think it's comical
(Fa la la, fa la la)
That Nature always does contrive
(Fa la la, la)
That ev'ry boy and ev'ry gal
That's born into this world alive
Is either a Neo-Liberal
Or else a Neo-Conservative
(Fa la la, fa la la)
Is either a Neo-Liberal
Or else a Neo-Conservative!

[Anderson]

Ah, Kaleberg beat me to it. 5 years = 1 DeLong.

[Colin Danby]

Just to supplement Barkley's comment, post-independence struggles in Latin America often played out between "liberals" and "conservatives," the former favoring export-led growth and privatizing communal land among other things. So to an historically-informed Latin American the referent of "liberal" is obvious, and the "neo" adds a certain bite.

Of course "liberal" means something totally different in the US of A, leading to endless confusion among folks like Richard Cohen. An example I've mentioned before is that Alejandro Foxley's excellent _Experimentos Neoliberales en America Latina_ was translated in 1983 as _Latin American Experiments in Neoconservative Economics_.

For all its advantages, I wonder if the blogosphere reinforces the use of a painfully inadequate left-right schema for thinking about politics.

[nemo]

I wouldn't give Cohen too much credit for having much of anything going on upstairs when he calls Bush either a liberal or a neo-liberal.

Cohen appears to be doing nothing any smarter than running yet another variation on the new right-wing talking point: Since Bush is a lousy failure as a conservative, he must therefore be its opposite, a liberal.