This Eric Alterman quote infuriates me:
I don’t mind if politicians want to exploit public ignorance in the service of a good cause.
In other words, Alterman — who complains constantly about the dissembling of the Bush administration — thinks deception in the service of a “good cause” is fine.
Andrew Sullivan also endorsed misleading the American people about the first Bush tax cut in a 2001 New Republic column:
Some commentators–at this magazine and elsewhere–get steamed because Bush has obscured this figure [15.6%, the percentage of GDP the government will consume in 2011 under the Bush budget] or claimed his tax cut will cost less than it actually will, or because he is using Medicare surplus money today that will be needed tomorrow and beyond. Many of these arguments have merit–but they miss the deeper point. The fact that Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smoke screen of “compassionate conservatism” shows how uphill the struggle is.
Yes, some of the time he is full of it on his economic policies. But a certain amount of B.S. is necessary for any vaguely successful retrenchment of government power in an insatiable entitlement state. Conservatives learned that lesson twice. They learned it when Ronald Reagan’s deficits proved to be an effective drag on federal spending (Stockman was right!)–in fact the only effective drag human beings have ever found. And they learned it when they tried to be honest about taking on the federal leviathan in 1994 and got creamed by Democrats striking the fear of God into every senior, child, and parent in America. Bush and Karl Rove are no dummies. They have rightly judged that, in a culture of ineluctable government expansion, where every new plateau of public spending is simply the baseline for the next expansion, a rhetorical smoke screen is sometimes necessary. I just hope the smoke doesn’t clear before the spenders get their hands on our wallets again.
Once again, it’s fine to dissemble as long as Sullivan agrees with you. With political commentators like these, it’s no wonder that American public debate is in such sorry shape.
Update 2/23 — Alterman links to my post today but fails to offer a substantive response:
Well, if I can infuriate Brendan Nyhan, here, at least I haven’t wasted my day…
Does that mean he’s conceding my point?
Update 2/24 — A reader objected that I presented Alterman’s quote out of context, so I’m including a larger quote below the fold…
The port thing seems to be silly to me and it makes smart people seem really dumb. Look at this catch of Maureen Dowd by TP:
TP’s nominee for most obvious yet asinine port comment: “Maybe it’s corporate racial profiling, but I don’t want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to 9/11, running American ports.” That’s not Bill O’Reilly or Lou Dobbs. It’s MoDo. Memo to Maureen: Foreign companies are already managing “the majority of key U.S. ports.” And by the way, what exact links did the UAE government have to 9/11?
I don’t mind if politicians want to exploit public ignorance in the service of a good cause. I particularly don’t mind it if makes trouble for anyone in the Cheney household for any reason whatsoever. But don’t ask me to do it for dumb reasons.