Joe Klein Versus Eric Alterman.
March 22, 2007 -- 2:47 PM EST // // Post a Comment
Joe Klein takes Eric Alterman to task because he dug up a Klein quote from The New Yorker in 2000 and posted it on his Altercation blog:
Quote of the Day: "Given the circumstances, there is only one possible governing strategy [for George W. Bush]: a quiet, patient, and persistent bipartisanship." -- Joe Klein, The New Yorker.
Klein says that this demonstrates that Alterman is "still after me" and "still pathetic," then rejoins:
But I was right about that, wasn't I? Bush's idiotic right-wing governing strategy has turned out to be a historic failure, no?
Well yes, but that isn't the only point that Klein argued in the New Yorker in 2000. I've got a fuller excerpt from Klein's original piece after the jump (if you're interested), and while Klein did warn against a hyper-partisan governing style, he also was wrong in some key ways, too -- the very point Alterman was highlighting.
But here's the thing. The point isn't even so much whether Klein was right or wrong six years ago. I'm raising this in all sincerity to ask a larger question: Why is this "pathetic"? Why does Klein tend to react so violently when people quote his past work? I mean, if you're a pundit, you should want people to think your opinions are important enough to engage. Alterman -- like many liberal bloggers -- thinks centrist pundits like Klein are so influential that their past wrongness is partly responsible for our current state of affairs, that they successfully marginalized early liberal anti-Bush voices as extreme while simultaneously blinding themselves to the genuine extremism of the party running the entire Federal government, thus helping land us in the current mess.
You can agree or disagree with this view, but either way, the point is that many liberals clearly think Klein is influential enough to be argued with -- often -- and hence quote his past work in doing so. Why does this seem to get Klein so ticked off so often? After all, the very premise of the pundit enterprise is that you get paid big money to tell people what to think because thanks to your superior interpretive powers, your opinions matter. You can't expect people to take your opinions seriously while simultaneously being a bad sport when people hold your words to account. On the other hand, if you think your opinions shouldn't be weighed against history, why be a pundit in the first place?
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Fuller excerpt from Klein's piece:
[T]he election's most important political lesson has been obscured, and may be lost, in the process: the need for humble and conciliatory leadership at a moment of clearly defined, if not philosophically profound, national division...No matter the eventual outcome, the next President will struggle to establish his political authority. Given the circumstances, there is only one possible governing strategy: a quiet, patient, and persistent bipartisanship. This means that almost all the extravagant promises made during the campaign just ended are now officially inoperative. There will be no $1.3 trillion tax cut...The winning coalition is likely to shift with each vote, but each coalition will be built from the center out. Building and rebuilding these coalitions will be a daunting political task, but also a potentially liberating one-political necessity will force the next President to extricate himself, on occasion, from the influence of his party's traditional interests. The bullies and extremists who have populated the congressional leadership of both parties -- not just conservative ideologues, like Tom DeLay, of Texas, but also obdurate liberals, like David Bonior, of Michigan -- could find themselves abandoned by moderate backbenchers more willing to compromise.
George Bush might seem better suited to this new political landscape than Al Gore.