( - promoted by Chris Bowers)
Telling me again exactly what's wrong with the DC press corps yesterday were Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post and Frank Foer of the The New Republic. They were on a panel about the press and the elections, and repeated just about every stupid conventional wisdom myth about bipartisanship I've heard over the last few years.
We all know how it goes. When Democrats are in office, the important thing for the ruling party to do is be nice to the minority. Liberal politicians don't know what they're doing, and are unpopular. I've read all of those refrains a hundred times at least, but it's still sort of odd to be there live and in person and see that the people who write that stuff really think that way.
For instance, when Foer talked about "flailing Democrats" in referring to Clinton and Obama's plans to draw down troops in Iraq.
First, he said that they planned to get the troops out within a year, when neither has committed to get all of them out even by 2012. But that was the trivial error.
Someone can actually look at the incredible mess George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, KBR, Halliburton and Blackwater have made of Iraq and describe the people who are trying to fix it as "flailing." Wow. It's like mocking firefighters for trying to put out a burning building. Like mocking an E.R. surgeon for their attempts to save a motorcyclist who crashed into an overpass without their gear.
Then Marcus really warmed up to her subject. If you know how I am, you'll be very proud of how I totally did not stand up, demand that she tell us what she was smoking, and ask if she'd brought enough for everyone.
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