Matthew Yglesias Gets Medieval on Fred Hiatt (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

Yes. It's another Washington Post edition. Matthew Yglesias watches notable skank Fred Hiatt turn into a concern troll, as he worries that Bush's "valuable strands of policy" may wind up "strewn in the wreckage" as the "Bush presidency implodes." Yglesias leads Hiatt to the clue train: The policies that were Bush's weren't valuable. The policies that were valuable weren't Bushes--they were either implemented by others or they never got implemented, being for the Bushies at most boob bait for the bubbas who populate the Washington Post editorial board:

Matthew Yglesias: Fred Hiatt concedes that George W. Bush is a bad president but manages to lavish undeserved praise on him anyway:

But valuable strands of policy also may end up strewn in the wreckage, victims (in varying combinations) of President Bush's ineptitude, inconstancy and unpopularity. Among these are what Bush called compassionate conservatism, now moribund; American promotion of democracy abroad, now flailing; and accountability in elementary and high school education, losing ground as it approaches a major test in Congress...

[Hiatt's] editorial goes on to note, correctly, that compassionate conservatism never actually existed... that Bush has not, in fact, promoted democracy.... On education, meanwhile, the main legislative forces behind No Child Left Behind -- Ted Kennedy and George Miller -- are chairing the relevant House and Senate committees and none of the Democratic presidential candidates favor ending the school accountability provisions whose continuation Hiatt is worried about it.

There's just no story here.... [O]n those areas where good things have happened (NCLB and AIDS funding are the two I can think of) Democrats show every sign of wanting to continue the positive and perhaps make some improvements around the margin.... I, too, would rather... [find] some hidden downside to Bush['s collapse]... but there's nothing there.

Comments

[Kate G.]

Well, Hiatt's lament is simply in line with the "high broderist" complaint that policy is what needs to get done by Someone (capital S) without all that dirty politicking getting in the way. The country has needs, damn it, and those needs need to be met, says Hiatt, stamping his feet and spitting metaphorically on his parents (very nice liberal people, by the way) but the actual person Hiatt has supported all along doesn't seem to be able to satisfy those needs. Why is that, I wonder?

OK, I don't really wonder. Because Boy George is a lousy politician as well as a lousy theoretician as well as a lousy human being. Not only does George *not care* about the country, he can't even be bothered to care about initiatives he pretended to care about. And not only doesn't he care about actually executing any given policy (though he's gung ho on executing any given person) but he simply doesn't have the brains to do politics.

Because politics means getting things done with and without other political actors. In a dictatorship, you don't have a politics of negotiation and, in a sense, you don't have politics at all (although you may have strategies). In a democracy politics is *the way* you get stuff done, its not an impediment to it. Its a feature of the system, not a bug. Complaining that a politician had to use politics to get something done is like complaining that you had to use the monorail to get to the top of the mountain. You had a goal, and there was a tool ready to hand to get there. What were the alternatives? There are no shortcuts in democratic government.

Meanwhile, of course Hiatt's (and Broder's) complaints are, of course, utterly bogus, pathetic, and self serving. Politics to them is nasty only when when Democrats play it sucessfully. It is manly and meritorious when Bush and Rove and Cheney (in cohen's disgusting phrase) "practise the dark arts."

Kate G.

[andres]

Yglesias: "I, too, would rather... [find] some hidden downside to Bush['s collapse]... but there's nothing there."

Much as I hate to disagree with Matthew, I don't think Bush has collapsed in any meaningful sense of the term. His poll numbers have bottomed out, but impeachment is not going to happen, nor is there any prominent movement to have him and Cheney prosecuted after they leave office.

As for the Republican party, too many of the clueless will happily vote for the next Republican nominee while thanking their stars that Bush and Cheney are gone. Until they actually understand that Bush and Cheney are symptoms rather than causes of the Republican malaise, one cannot say that the Bush/Cheney legacy has collapsed. After the next president is inaugurated, both will laugh themselves clear to the bank without caring one whit that history labels them the worst administration ever.

We need a firmer judgement on these two criminals than simply the judgement of history and politics.

[Nash]

Brad,

It'd be so much easier to read if, when you return to your own comments in your posts in which you blockquote someone else, that you also returned to the same left-justified, no-indent formatting that you began with.

Can't tell you how many times it leaves this poor (I'll let you assign the meaning to that word) reader having to backtrack to make sure who is saying what. I don't like backtracking, even when it's my own fault because I'm a poor reader.

Thanks for considering.

[Nash]

I should add that it is obviously less of a problem here on your actual site, where you use different font characteristics, than in RSS feeds where that distinction is not maintained.

Call me too lazy to click through when I can read the entire thing in the feed.

Again, thanks.