Legal Commentary

Politics Is Stupid, Cont'd

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Matt Yglesias. it's good to remember that when Michael Kinsley is good, he's very good. Kinsley's column is ostensibly about "intellectual honesty, but what stood out to me about it is this part:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a master spin artist, plays on this social insecurity among journalists. Barbour doesn’t literally wink as he spins, but he manages to send the message: This is all a big game — a big wonderful game — and you have the privilege of playing it with me. [. . .] Far from being a “low bar,” >absolute intellectual honesty is something I’ve never actually seen in anyone inside Washington or out, politician or journalist or diplomat.

Pols are pols and do what they do. And as some readers often remind me, pundits are pundits and do what they do. And guess what, people are people and do what they do. More . . .

It always amazes me that folks can take such umbrage when it is pointed out that, horrors, President Obama was not "intellectually honest" about the public option. They take it so personally. It's bizarre. Any rational honest person knew Obama was not fighting for the public option, was willing to trade it away and likely did just that. Sure, in some hypothetical ideal world, he "supports" a public option. But in the reality of the negotiations over the health bill, Obama did not give a rat's a** about it. Now maybe this was the right call on his part. Maybe the wrong call. But that Obama made that call seemed so apparent to me that it is simply hilarious how much umbrage was raised over folks declaring the obvious.

Pols, like athletes,journalists, lawyers,judges, doctors, plumbers, construction workers, teachers, etc., "spin." It so happens their job requires a lot more "spinning" than most others.

Anyone who wants to discuss politics in an "intellectually honest" way has to accept this. Politics is stupid. If you can't accept, acknowledge and incorporate that fact that, then you should not be writing about politics.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 06, 2010 (boomark / email).