On Monday, April 7th William Kristol succeeded at spewing out another column deriding Barack Obama and promoting John McCain. Of course this is not a surprise given Mr. Kristol's solid affiliation with the Republican Party and Neo-conservative causes. What is surprising however, is that this brilliant "intellectual" continues to spew out garbage in an old and anti-intellectual fashion - by talking about literally nothing.
He spends close to 100% of his column telling stories about the people he spoke to in his recent tours around the country and that many Republicans conventionally believe that Barack Obama will be our next president. He then talks about Obama's great fund-raising achievements and that his candidacy is not being hurt by Clinton's continued presence and participation in the Democratic nominating process. Unsurprisingly, he concludes that Barack Obama will lose to McCain, partly which he attributes to an e-mail he received from a "Democratic operative" stating that Obama's chances of beating McCain are essentially weak. Put aside for the moment that the foundation of Kristol's argument and conclusions is the anecdotal evidence he collected. What's more important is what he slips in towards the end of his column, which incidentally summarizes his conclusions better than the 99% of his column:
"Barack Obama: He’s not who you think he is" would be the theme. The supporting evidence would come from his left-wing voting record in Illinois and Washington, spiced up with fun video clips of Reverend Wright.
He then adds,
Then there’s the fact that we’re at war. As a Congressional staffer put it, "Here’s something to consider: Although Hillary will be out in May, she may determine the outcome in November. McCain’s secret weapon — among Clinton supporters — may be Hillary’s 3 a.m. national security ad."
Evidently, Mr. Kristol nearly explicitly admits that issues is not what's important in the 2008 election; what is important is playing the "gotcha game", that he accurately predicts Republicans would launch about Rev. Wright and would exploit the 3 A.M. ad.
Of course Mr. Kristol is neither a Republican strategist nor a political pundit. He is a self-described intellectual, specializing in foreign affairs, evidenced by his co-founding of the Project for the New American Century, being the editor of the Weekly Standard and sitting on the board of Manhattan Institute. One would expect a higher standard from this stalwart Neo-conservative, let alone that his columns appear in a reputable, first-rate newspaper. Perhaps it would be fair to expect that Mr. Kristol publishes columns defending the War in Iraq on merit; that he defends Bush's latest military venture in Europe, installing a missile defense system (more on that in my next post); that he would argue for war with Iran; that he would convince the American people to continue to support Bush tax cuts; that he would defend presidential executive privileges, which apparently includes the right to torture and wiretap American people (just ask John Yoo).
But Mr. Kristol is also an astute political observer. He understands very well that the American public is sick of the Bush presidency and its policies and is seeking real change. Hence, it wouldn't make much political sense persuading the populace in continuing to support Bush 3. So he resorts to the usual cheap political tactics and public relations maneuvers advanced by the likes of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity - an axis of fascism.
Hence, the question posed in the title of this post can now be confidently answered: Never!