Publius Sugar-Coats It Again
by tgirschSeptember 11th, 2008
Man, I wish he’d tell us how he really feels:
That interview confirmed what’s become even more clear in the past few days — McCain’s selection was a joke. She (like me) has absolutely no business being a vice-presidential nominee.
Let’s start with the interview, and then I’ll make some more general points about why this is all such a farce (to borrow from Andrew).
Hilzoy has already established that she’s not exactly up to speed on preemptive war (a pretty important point for a president). But to make a more general observation, it’s fairly clear that she’s either never engaged these issues or that she simply doesn’t read the news. Anyone with passing familiarity with the news could have winged answers better than she did.
But the point is not so much the answers, but the more general ignorance (not lack of intelligence) on display tonight. It reveals that she’s never really thought about any of this stuff — she’s never engaged it at the level that presidents should have engaged it. For instance, she apparently contradicted McCain’s position on Pakistan by leaving a unilateral strike on the table. McCain, remember, ridiculed Obama earlier for taking that same position. Second, she had clearly never heard the term “Bush Doctrine,” which means she follows the news on only a cursory level. I’m not saying every member of the public should know — but vice presidential candidates should. Third, she was way too specific on the Russia-Georgia stuff — good politicians and diplomats never say so specifically that we would go to war with . . . RUSSIA!
But even beyond the specifics, the entire interview was like watching a bad actor spit out memorized lines that she had learned only a few nights ago. You could almost hear her mental gears grinding, trying to retrieve the talking points and forcing them into her answers. Nothing came from her — or if it did, she certainly fooled me. Reagan and Clinton — governors both — would never have appeared that ignorant, largely because they weren’t. They were engaged with the issues of their day and wrestled with them intellectually. Today’s interview reflected an unprepared, uninformed person cast into the spotlight far before her time.
And that’s what’s so absurd about the whole thing. The Palin selection is, above all else, a reflection on John McCain’s willingness to let the country be run by an unvetted and woefully unprepared person. And if she’s that uninformed, it means that someone else will effectively be running the country if she’s president — just like Bush and Cheney.
…snip…
The Palin craze is also a poor reflection on the social conservative base, which has so uncritically embraced her. They embrace her not because they know anything about her, but because they think the world is out to get them, and that Palin is “one of them” who also faces liberal attacks. The truth, though, is that they’re just projecting their preferences onto a blank canvas. At the end of day, they’re apparently not all that interested in qualifications or ability to govern.
Hell, McCain might as well have campaigned over the past 2 weeks with a cardboard cutout with a wind-up string that gave the same (dishonest) speech every time. It’s just a joke — no interviews, no engagement with the issues, no qualifications whatsoever. Can you imagine what Drudge/Hannity/et al. would have said if Kaine had been picked and gave that blabbering interview? They’d talk about it for a month.
Quit pulling your punches, dude!
Categories: Foreign Policy, News & Current Events, Politics |
You know, you keep making comments about how outrageous . . . certain people’s writing is. I never understand that.
The above is nothing more than a straightforward description of Palin’s poor performance and lack of qualifications. It’s a good piece, content-wise, but I can’t find anything remarkable in it.
There is some evaluative language, to be sure, but it’s hardly unhinged: her candidacy is a “joke”, she has “no business” in high office, the interview was “like watching a bad actor”. Does anyone here disagree? There are some opinions expressed in the piece as well, but they are in no way controversial: a vice presidential candidate should know what policies are currently in place and be able to discuss them; other politicians would not have been as unprepared as she is. Surely the former is uncontroversial, and the latter is obvious from history.
The rest is just description and reasonable inference. And the writer hardly goes to extremes. Palin is ignorant, unprepared, and unfit for the office she seeks. It’s obvious. She is a tool of the religious far-right. That’s obvious. Her nomination is utterly unserious in respect of the qualifications needed for the highest offices in the land, and could only have been made by, and supported by, people who simply don’t care about truthfulness, preparedness, honesty, or qualifications. That conclusion is logically inescapable.
So why not say that?
How is it some sort of shocking act to speak the utterly obvious truth about an utterly unserious and unprepared candidate in the most important event coming up in the forseeable future? In what way is Publius “punching” anyone by stating the obvious? I certainly hope he feels more strongly about it than he writes - his writing hardly goes beyond simple factual description. But you seem to think he’s on some kind of rant. (The clearest indictment of the GOP’s performance throughout my lifetime is simply this: that you cannot give a true factual description of their behavior and policies without employing the most bitterly condemnatory language: criminal, burglary, wiretap, coverup, illegal wars, unprovoked attacks, assassinations, invasions, corruption, payoffs, kickbacks, secret bombings, genocide, dirty wars, illegal arms deals, dictatorships, infiltration, intimidation, character assassination, racial division, code words, pandering, religious division, religion-based policymaking, homophobia, misogyny, lies, deception, war crimes, torture, kidnapping, secret arrests, secret detention, secret extradition, secret tribunals, enemies lists, security lists, universal surveillance . . . . You almost have to invent new words to actually express an opinion about them.) Under these circumstances, and in these times, harsh language is the only factually true language. It is not remarkable to use it. What is remarkable is that so few people will speak the truth, using the words that are necessary to express that truth.
We often complain about the bogus “balance” in the media that refuses to call out right-wing falsehoods and crimes, or insists on placing them on a par with mis-steps by others that do not rise even near the same level. I hardly think this blog is the place to be doing that.
You seem to be of the opinion that I disapprove of what Publius writes (or even of what certain other people write much of the time). Allow me to disabuse you of both notions forthwith.
Comment #2, in even shorter form: Dude, WTF?!?
Comment #1, in shorter form:
I know you agree with the conclusions of the writers who post, or are quoted, here. But you keep saying certain ways of expressing those opinions are wild-eyed, or over the top, when they’re really just true and honest statements about the way things are. We need more uncompromising language, not less. Your perspective on what is crazy or harsh or rant-y seems to set the bar well below what is necessary just to speak the truth, let alone express any anger about it.
Perhaps the fine line betweeen “brutally frank” and “gratuitous” is finer than I thought. I generally encourage the former and discourage the latter.
I still don’t get it. How is it gratuitous to speak the truth about public figures? Is there some time when it isn’t right to point out their misdeeds?
Another simple measure of the measureless GOP depravity: I literally can’t think of anything I don’t believe they would do if it benefited them in some way, and there’s damn little that’s evil, incompetent, or just plain stupid that they haven’t done already. It’s almost literally not possible to think of any derogatory statement that can’t be said in simple truth about prominent GOP politicians, their policies, or their beliefs. (What haven’t they done, in just the past few years? Kidnapping, torture, war crimes, kickbacks, subversion of the Constitution, illegal wars, deliberate instigation of war without provocation, threatened nuclear war, conniving at foreign coups, business corruption, harassment and character assassination of opponents, fomenting prejudice and discrimination for political gain, and lies, and lies, and lies to enable it all, cover it up, and undermine the democratic processes they are pledged to honor. How is it possible to overstate their crimes?)
And if there’s nothing you can say about them that would constitute going too far in terms of truth, why would it ever constitute going too far in terms of relevance? I honestly can’t think of any time, place, or choice of words that would be inappropriate for calling out the evil that has perverted and degraded our country. My only concern when writing about the current administration is to find words strong enough to express the disgust it triggers, or the nauseating foulness of its deeds and of the twisted, vicious creeps who conceived and perpetrated them. I never have succeeded, but it boggles me to imagine there would be a reason not to try.
This post wasn’t supposed to be about this, but here goes.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, but it matters not just what you say, but how you say it. I’ll try to illustrate by way of example:
Figure 1: “Person X’s policies are insane, and cannot work. It insults our intelligence to suggest otherwise.”
Figure 2: “Person X is a fucking asshole with insane, unworkable policies, and anyone who supports person X is a fucking moron, as well as probably an asshole themselves.”
Notice any slight differences here? Both examples say essentially the same thing, and yet one of them is a lot more likely to be taken seriously by those who don’t already agree than the other. [Yes, there are plenty who can't be reached by any language, but there's no point in talking to them, or in many cases even about them.]
All I have said in the past is that if you [general 'you', not you specifically] want your arguments to be taken seriously by anyone outside of your own little echo chamber, aim for Figure 1, not for Figure 2. I feel like you and digg both have misrepresented this argument of mine as if I’m saying that you’re never allowed to be frank, never allowed to throw out a zinger, or never allowed to call a duck a duck, or never allowed to have an angry tone, or that I’m somehow saying that everything must always be sugar-coated or touchy-feely or some bullshit like that, then I call bullshit: that’s not at all what I’m saying.
What I am saying that the point of making arguments, whether oral or written (virtually or physically) is to convince people that your position is the correct one. Brutal honesty — and yes, sometimes even harsh language — is entirely necessary toward reaching that objective. But anything that is detrimental to that goal — the goal of bringing people around — needs to go. And gratuitous name-calling or a “shrill” tone or seeming “unhinged” are serious negatives to be avoided. They’ll turn off a lot of readers before they even get through the second paragraph. You can have the best point in the world, but what the hell good does it do if nobody who doesn’t already agree with you bothers to read the whole thing?
It frankly continues to befuddle me why this position of mine is even remotely controversial. And yet somehow it seems to be very much so, at least from your perspective.
I liked Publius’ piece precisely because it comes across as being brutally honest and exceptionally angry without sounding shrill or off the hook, and without resorting to excessive name-calling or gratuitous personal attacks — his piece is not completely without such things, but they don’t define the piece.
Finally, at least where I come from “stop sugar-coating it and tell us how you really feel” is a common sarcastic joke to make when someone has just been exceptionally candid. I never would have imagine that someone would construe that as an insult.
T -
I think what’s happened here is that “sugar-coats it” plus “tell us how you really feel” plus “quit pulling your punches” appeared to equal “this piece is over the top.”
Seen that way, KTK’s reaction, which came down to “What the hell is so extreme about this piece?” makes sense and because you didn’t mean it was over the top, you couldn’t understand why he responded as he did.
LarryE:
That makes sense, so let me be clear: I was saying the piece was brutally honest; I wasn’t saying it was over-the-top.
Publius didn’t sugar-coat it, but he didn’t cover it with piss and vinegar, either.
This sorta piece is one of the two big reasons I prefer reading the unedited transcripts of speeches and interviews rather than watching the version pop media can squeeze in between Britney’s coochie and a five-legged pig; I got an entirely different feel of the “Russia” thing, and a few other parts of the interview.
I should clarify that; I got a similar vibe of “unpreparedness” on Russia — like most politicians, she’s got that frustrating habit of repeating the same thing from different directions, which I associate with unpreparedness in other public speakers — but the full text of the interview does not support the WarWithRussiaNow assessment, at least if you can trust Mark Levin’s copy. I think there are some youtube copies of the video, although both Gibson and Palin’s voices make me want to claw my ears out and are difficult for me to follow, so I haven’t checked exacts yet.
I personally wish it did. NATO is basically there so that folks could respond to a USSR (and, today, Russian) military attack on any NATO ally would result in military attacks by every NATO ally, and economic sanctions are not my idea of a great response to Putin or most tyrants. Politically, though, her full response is a bit more likely to be palatable to the average person.
TG,
Different strokes for different folks is all I can say. While you employ a different style than KTK (or me), you benefit from the influence of the other. You need that voice telling you to push the envelope and KTK needs that voice telling him to stop before the FBI barrels down his door. Theoretically, it should work the way a great band might.
Regardless, let me pose this question to you, TG? Can you offer any sort of empirical evidence to suggest you’ve been more successful at persuading the undecideds, or pulling a member of the dark side over to the light, than KTK has, or I might? I actually find that when it comes to in-person conversation my style is highly effective. It’s confrontational and it forces you to address the most basic notions underpinning your thoughts - it’s difficult to run away from. On the internet, it’s a different dynamic I guess. You can just X the window and go somewhere else. In person, I’ll just follow you around the party talking shit until the boxed wine is done.
Point is, there are different ways to skin a cat.
Needless to say, I agree with KTK’s larger points throughout the post. Hey, KTK, I need your cell so I can conference you in the next time I wind up in a “Chomsky’s a centrist” argument…
Empirical evidence? No. Anecdotal? Sure. Also, I’ve had a few regular readers (and not just non-liberal ones) tell me that they skip reading KTK’s posts altogether, because they often find the tone off-putting. On substance, I’ve long been a defender of KTK, telling people to look past the tone and to the meat. I’ve often said that KTK plus a good editor would make top-notch stuff.
But as you say, different strokes for different folks.
digg > I am much more inclined to listen to tgirsch because even if he disagrees vehemently, he respects my right to have an opinion and is willing to accept that I may have valid reasons for my perspective. KTK, in my experience, has come across as incredibly condescending to anyone who does not agree with his perspective.
If tgirsch and KTK say the exact same thing, I will consider what tgirsch while mostly ignoring KTK because of his condescending preachy tone.
What I find ironic is that KTK seemingly HATES hard core evangelicals because of their attitudes and the way they present themselves and yet KTK’s presentation and attitude is almost identical to those he so heavily mocks.
BU,
there’s a difference between being condencending on the left wing and on the right wing. Compare:
“OF COURSE everyone should have civil rights.”
“OF COURSE my invisible sky fairy cares who you has sex with.”
(joking, mostly.)
Digg, since you asked, I much prefer tgirsch’s style and find it more effective at changing my point of view.
But, you’re ostensibly a member of the choir, Ted. So, I’m not sure how much you even count.
For my part, KTK is what/who lead me to this blog. He commented periodically on metaphorical’s blog, which I was a contributor to for a while, and I was such a fan of him as a commenter that it lead me here.
People wrtie/blog/etc. for different purposes. Personally I write/comment to challenge people to rethink basic assumptions about things we consider (or are at least told to consider) as “given.” I don’t write to convert people, per se, I don’t write to make friends.
I’m not sipping the Kool-Aid of changing the world by converting one gattsuru at a time over the course of two years worth of discourse on a blog. So, in the spirit of selfish schadenfreude, I’d much rather just watch KTK lay the smack down and let out a soul-cleansing “OOH, Damn”, like I watching watching LT snap Theisman’s leg in half.
Again, it’s style, and personal preference. I’m certainly not opposed to offending the sensibilities of a disingenuously self-righteous conservative/libertarian ideologue over the intertubes.
It’s actually pretty hard to explain the way I feel without sounding incredibly offensive to those who I maintain cordial disagreements with here on this site, so maybe I’ll just quit while I’m ahead.
Aww, c’mon! You really passed up an opportunity to use “Ohhh, SNAP!” when you were about to mention the Theismann injury? You disappoint me!
True. /slaps self on wrist/