Punditry Kristolized: Part IV

Not long after a New York Times editorial page editor defended the hiring of William Kristol, saying that he was "a serious, respected conservative intellectual," I began the tedious task of cataloguing how consistently and overwhelmingly wrong he has been over the years.  Describing his collective wisdom as:

...the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

... I wrote about Kristol beating the drum for war with Iraq in the months after September 11th, his hysterical claims about WMD and then his  backpedaling when none were found, and his demonizing of those who opposed the war as he waxed poetic over the latest corner turned.  

But the war in Iraq isn't the only thing this "serious, respected conservative intellectual," has been wrong about, so today let’s take a look at Kristol running the gamut from hypocrisy to the laughable, from dishonest self-aggrandizing to outright lies.  And let me add here that when mining the depth and breadth of the wrongness that is William Kristol, the problem isn’t finding material; it is culling it down to a readable length.  So let’s begin with just a couple of examples of his hypocrisy.

Here  is what Kristol had to say during the early days of the investigation into the outing of Valerie Wilson:

If individuals purposefully lied to a grand jury or engaged in a knowing conspiracy to cover up the truth, those persons deserve to be fired and prosecuted.

Of course that call for respect of the rule of law went out the door once Lewis "Scooter" Libby, right-hand man of Dick Cheney, was convicted and sentenced to prison for purposefully lying to a grand jury and knowingly covering up the truth.  Then Kristol argued that:

There was no underlying crime...

But many of those who are demoralized now by Libby's conviction, and by the administration's passivity in defense of its people and policies, would be reinvigorated by a pardon.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly."

Naturally Kristol ignored that the underlying crime wasn’t proven because Libby obstructed justice when he lied through his teeth to the Grand Jury, but gosh, doesn’t Kristol sound serious by quoting Shakespeare?  Of course he probably could have found a better example than a man considering the potential drawbacks to committing murder, but I digress.  

Here’s what Kristol had to say about the Senate refusing to convict Bill Clinton:

They simply refused to condemn perjury and refused to explain why they weren't simply telling the American people perjury's no big deal.

Perhaps at some future date Mr. Kristol will use some of his valuable New York Times real estate to simply tell his readers why he now believes that perjury is "no big deal."  The headline could read: IOKIYAR

But his hypocrisy isn’t limited to just the big stories.  Consider these two lines, separated by only two sentences in one of his columns:

...nutty, hysterical, suffering-from-Bush-derangement-syndrome left-wing bloggers.   [...]

Unwilling seriously to debate the choices before us, and the consequences of those choices, antiwar advocates are now down to name-calling.

Really, it’s impossible to take this man seriously.  So let’s take a few moments to look at some unintended comedy from this intellectual giant:

And if the media and the Democrats want to remain sex-obsessed? It might not be amiss for Republican candidates to remind the electorate which of the two parties has, shall we say, a more "nuanced" view of sexual scandal...Which party worships at the altar of an even more famous abuser-of-his-position-of-power-for-sexual-favors--Bill Clinton? Not the Republicans.

No, the Republicans worship at the altar of that toe-tapping Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, of David "Diaper Me" Vitter, and Mark "Call Me" Foley.  So if a "nuanced" view means stall-sex-with-a-stranger, hooker-sex-with-pampers and a potential star of "To Catch A Predator," then by all means, Bill, let’s remind the electorate of that.  In fact, bring it on.

And this bold prediction from Kristol speaks for itself:

The damage Clinton did -- to our Constitution, to our public discourse, to the fabric of our national political life -- will undoubtedly long outlive him. But perhaps the recovery will be quicker and more complete than one might have thought just a few weeks ago. We have reason to hope for the best: that Bush is capable of growing -- in the real sense, not the usual Washington sense -- in office.

Honest to God, big or small, this man can’t get anything right:

The Giants probably won’t beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

And not only wrong, but dishonest.  In 2005, Kristol was one of the collaborators on George Bush's State of the Union Address.  And during the post-speech coverage on Fox News, Kristol said:

A very eloquent speech, of course. Maybe one of the most powerful speeches, one of the most impressive speeches, I think I've seen an American president give.

...with no mention that he helped write it.  And later writing about it, Kristol gushed:

Informed by Strauss and inspired by Paine, appealing to Lincoln and alluding to Truman, beginning with the Constitution and ending with the Declaration, with Biblical phrases echoing throughout--George W. Bush's Second Inaugural was a powerful and subtle speech.

It will also prove to be a historic speech.

Again, not a word that he was involved in writing it.  Of course dishonestly is Kristol's stock-in-trade. When he wasn't busy inventing imminent threats from Iraq, he was telling outright lies about stem cell research, joining in the attacks against Graeme Frost, or whining that the like's of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Tom DeLay were the victims of a liberal witch hunt aimed at the destruction of the conservative dream.  Or something like that.  Take all that, toss in a little misogyny, add it to his colorful history of warmongering and you have the sum total of William Kristol.  The "serious, respected conservative intellectual," who once said:

Did Newsweek even attempt to check it out before publishing it? Or does Newsweek believe that inserting the phrase, "credible or not," at the beginning of the relevant paragraph, absolves them of this journalistic duty?

Perhaps Mr. Kristol should ask the New York Times that question.  And then ask himself why he still has a job.