It’s catchy, ain’t it.
A short time ago, the Washington Post’s David Broder wrote that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was the Democrats’ Gonzales. Today the Daily News‘ Tom DeFrank does pretty much the same thing, calling Bush and Reid “peas in a puzzled pod.”
Writes DeFrank …
As the Iraq war becomes ever more divisive and heartbreaking, the lame-duck President and Senate majority leader pursue a high-stakes game of “Amateur Hour” from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Ave. Even their friends know it.
In a town where genuine bipartisanship in the national interest seems to have died with Gerald Ford’s presidency three decades ago, the two main protagonists have managed to achieve the impossible – all of political Washington shaking their heads in collective distress.
I have a higher opinion of DeFrank than Broder. But the pattern is pretty clear: DC’s elderly wise men reporters seem to be falling over themselves to compare Reid to an incredibly unpopular president and an unprecedentedly disgraced Attorney General.
It’s well enough to knock these guys around. I’ve done my share of it with Broder. But it’s worth taking a moment to recognize the deeper pattern. For these guys the adoration of bipartisanship for its own sake always trumps efforts to grapple with key public questions. You either think we’re fundamentally on the right track or the wrong track in the occupation of Iraq. If you think it’s the latter bipartisanship is an empty vessel since the president is unwilling to change any core point of his policy and the great majority of Republican members of Congress — for now at least — are unwilling to oppose him. That means that trying to force the president to change policy is the only honorable option available. It’s really as simple as that.
Both DeFrank and Broder zero in on Reid’s ‘war is lost’ comment. I won’t go into the ins and outs of the different versions of what he said. But the simple fact is that a clear majority of the people in the country agree. They think the war was a mistake and that as the president wants to fight it it’s not winnable.
Reid’s real sin in their eyes isn’t verbal clumsiness or political obtuseness, though that’s what they want to pass it off as. Their beef with him is that he’s thrown down the gauntlet on this key issue. And that is an unforgiveable breach of decorum, notwithstanding the merits of the issue at hand.
Reid is in trouble with these guys for saying what most people consider the unvarnished truth. And to these guys that’s unforgiveable.
