Reason‘s Tim Cavanaugh thinks the Bushies should lay off of Richard Clarke and turn their attention instead to John Kerry:
Weren’t you paying attention when all those former Clinton administration people (I’m not sure anymore, but it seems like it was all of them) did the exact same thing to their former boss? The tearing down of reputations is a business best left to us, the smallfries. I’ve never known any journalist who lost an opportunity to take a public swipe at whatever publication he or she worked at last, and I’d guess it’s not much different in your line of work. Like Jesus
9 Replies to “Here’s the story, of a man named…”
One man’s tattletale is another man’s whistleblower. And Americans love whistleblowers. Whatever Clarke is, he’s no Linda Tripp.
You’re right, Clarke’s a “whistleblower.” It just so happened that his attack of conscience coincided with the release of his book, and that his public testimony before the Commission conradicted a host of earlier statements dating back to the time when his opinion actually counted for something.
There are times when I am amazed at how little the political establishment (which includes political journalists and various amateur wonks) understands about the country they live in. And that’s even with the well-known rule of thumb that nobody pays attention until after Labor Day.
Just two days ago, the headline on a Pew Research report stated that Bush Support Steady in Wake of Clarke Criticisms, but the political establishment still thinks that Clarke is important.
Well, I don’t think Clarke is important (as I’ve noted in previous posts on the subject), but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see the Administration crush him on principle alone.
Just to be clear, it wasn’t my intent to accuse you of thinking that Clarke is, was, or ever will be important.
I realize on re-reading that I pretty much took off on a tangent that interested me. Possibly only me.
Doh!
No, I think you make an important point. Last night on “Nightline” (couldn’t reach the remote), Paul Begala kept insisting that the Clarke affair was “devastating” to Bush. And yet he was overtaking Kerry in the polls.
Personally, I think those Americans who are paying attention to all this think Rice should testify (even if they agree in principle with executive privilege). But for my part, it’s only so she can thoroughly discredit Richard Clarke, who strikes me as the worst kind of disgruntled and self-promoting bureaucrat. The way he mislead everyone about his party loyalties (he registered Republican and voted for Gore) speaks volumes about his character, I think.
part one: interesting piece on the Clarke epidemic, but the assertions that Bush & admin. are attacking Clarke tick me off. he made accusations, and you can just imagine how the NYLAtimes would take it if all we heard in response to Clarke’s spin was the whistling wind. is a response by an opponent automatically an attack? has first-strike defense been succeeded a generation later by second-strike offense?
part two: I have to remind myself that things like this are good. like inoculations, stupid controversies milked by the media help immunize people, in this case, to crap. given that there is no alternative to this live virus, you can expect the shot in the arm to be more than a bit unpleasant.
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A tattletale doesn’t lie; he blabs secrets. And the secret here is that the Bushies just weren’t very interested in what the outgoing Clintonites had to say about al-Qaeda. That Cheney claimed Clarke “wasn’t in the loop” kind of sums it up, since Clarke WAS the loop. They gave him short shrift and that’s why he’s talking. For many reasonable people, the Bushies have a far bigger credibility problem than Clarke, and it will be up to Rice to persuade that she and her team heeded the “hair on fire” warnings of Tenet, Clarke, Berger, etc. as quickly and thoroughly as they should have.