From TPM Reader TL …
There is a wonderful debunking of the right’s take on Joe Biden in Rosen’s op-ed piece on today’s NYT. The crying shame of it all is that the gentlemanly unwillingness to descend into the miasma of rank political expediency will lose both Biden and Obama the election. The Republicans would have aired all of Clarence Thomas’s dirty laundry until he withdrew his name. They did it against
GoldbergFortas and would do it today if they could, just like they would impeach Clinton again–Bill or Hillary–if given the chance. But it is not just the lack of political shame on the part of the Republicans, but the media’s willingness to judge the two parties by different standards that makes it all possible. That, according to Richard Perlstein’s book, also dates to theGoldbergFortas era. The party of principle versus the party of slime, an oversimplification perhaps, but not that far off the mark.
I’m not sure I’d say it’s an issue of ‘principle’ precisely. But I’ve actually given a lot more thought over the last few months to the ways in which this pattern is one that is not at all limited to the United States, but shows up between center-left and center-right parties, or often hard right parties, in various times and places at least through Europe and I suspect in other parts of the globe as well. Rather than something in the Democratic party I think this is rooted to the role of authoritarianism in each party’s make up.
(ed.note: I and several readers have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what Reader TL was referring to about Arthur Goldberg. I think he’s referring to the controversy over Abe Fortas. So I’ve broken with customary convention and edited TL‘s email to reflect that.)
