One of the most encouraging and refreshing things about Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House was the way he and his operation consistently distanced themselves from the torrent of knee-jerk gossip that passes for mainstream political news. When hyper-plugged-in observers would fret and panic over the latest meme the campaign itself seemed to float above all that, uninterested in such patent silliness. That calm, measured approach to campaigning was on display during the long primary and during the general campaign. “Hillary won Texas and Ohio! Obama has faltered!” cried the bedwetters, meanwhile the Obama campaign quietly pointed to the delegate totals and went about their business. “Financial panic! Come together for the good of the country!” screamed reactionary mandarins, no campaign “suspension” for us, said Obama.
The studied lack of interest in the ups and downs of remorselessly nonsensical discourse has faded since Obama and his people took control at 1600. Some of that was to be expected, no one moves to D.C. without becoming at least slightly more vacuous. And the “para-government” remains wired for Red ideas and Red talking points. But where was the calm repetition of facts during the media shit storm of August? Where was the rejection of demonstrably stupid political posturing when it comes to “spending freezes”? It is impossible to follow the news and not get the sense that the Administration has begun to buy into the premise that this kind of background noise should be treated with anything but contempt.
That is not a good thing. To take but the most prominent example we’ve had a health care “debate” conducted almost entirely between people who a) already have health insurance and b) stand to be taxed one way or another for reform that would benefit the overwhelming majority of Americans. Even worse, that “debate” was probably 3% policy and 97% bombastic horseshit.
On Friday Glenn Greenwald was howling into the wind about what an indelible disgrace it is that people who spent years lying (and getting paid to lie) about the Iraq War are still treated with enormous respect. Here’s the nut of it:
I’m periodically criticized for an “angry” tone in my writing, which I always find mystifying. I genuinely don’t understand why anger should be avoided or even how it could be. What other reaction is possible when one looks around and sees the government leaders who committed these grave crimes completely unburdened by any accountability and treated as respectable dignitaries, or watches the Tom Friedmans, Jeffrey Goldbergs, Fred Hiatts and other unrepentent leading media propagandists who helped enable it still feted as Serious and honest experts, or beholds the current Cabinet and Senate filled with people who supported it, or observes the Michael O’Hanlons and Les Gelbs and other Foreign Policy Community luminaries who lent trans-partisan credence to it all continue to traipse around still pompously advocating for more wars that never touch their lives?
What other reaction indeed? Tom Friedman is perhaps the most influential foreign policy pundit in the country, and yet on the primary foreign policy question of the last decade he was more than just disastrously wrong. He kept defending his disastrously wrong position for years in such an intellectually empty way that a term for perpetual war denial was named after him. And he’s got a lot of company. That the opinions of totally discredited people are accorded serious respect is more than a little disconcerting.
The same illogical and sad dynamic is at work when it comes to energy, health care, economic policy . . . anything. It was probably too much to ask that all the foolish poobahs be tossed out and banished from teevee at once. They are as well entrenched as any successful parasite. But it shouldn’t have been too much to ask for the Administration to refuse to play their games.
