Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe
By Arianna Huffington
Alfred A. Knopf
New York: 2008
400 pages, $24.95
"There's going to be other wars," John McCain said in January 2008. "We will never surrender but there will be other wars." And, shockingly, the idea did not seem to fill him with unbearable sadness. In fact, he seemed like a grizzled football coach at the tail end of a long career, finally about to get a shot at coaching the Super Bowl.
It's tempting to slide into thinking some pundits' personalities loom larger than their actual output, and Arianna Huffington, I confess, is one of those for me. Her stage presence, her accent, her command of the microphone when put on the spot, all dazzle and make it easy to forget she writes--and blogs--as the basis of her current success. With Right Is Wrong, however, her ability to cut to the chase and make her case in print shines through as she gallops readers through all the ways and on all the topics on which the right has been ... well ... wrong during the Bush ascendancy.
Needless to say, it is not a pretty picture. Iraq, the economy, privacy rights ... Daily Kos readers know the drill. What Huffington does though is pull the strands together--or take them apart at times--to examine how it all is of one piece. She does this with writing that snaps, crackles and pops , and a goodly dose of humor. I never thought I'd say revisiting the dreary record of the Bush years could be a romp, but here you have it: It's a romp, with lots of indignation and direct-hit metaphors. Take, for example, the latter part of a chart she inserts when discussing the Bush's love of sloganeering:
- NEW WAY FORWARD
- SURGE TO VICTORY
- A NEW WAY BACKWARD
A FASTER NEW WAY BACKWARD
HOLY SHIT, LET'S GET OUT OF HERE
- A NEW WAY OF FORGETTING IT EVER HAPPENED
- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
- THE NEW GATHERING THREAT
Huffington has a real gift for marrying indignation and dark humor--it's one of the secrets of her success, if you look closely. She's a zippy and entertaining writer who stands out in a field in which the dreary and ponderous often gain more renown, and I've often thought she's underrated because she's often the most accessible. Right Is Wrong is a case in point--this is the ideal book to buy and pass on to undecideds you know, or people who aren't as immersed in the day-to-day shenanigans of the Bush administration as your average blog reader. There is an assumption throughout that readers are at least loosely aware of current events (the full blow-by-blow of the Plame outing, for example, is not provided, but just the mere outline), and that's what is needed to clarify the situation is equal doses parody, documentation and electric editorializing. It's an amusing batch she whips up, that's for sure.
Take, for example, her bull's eye take on the media, and one of its most revered scions in particular:
So how come Woodward, supposedly the preeminent investigative reporter of our time, missed the biggest story of our time-—a story that was taking place right under his nose?
Some would say it was because he was carrying water for the Bushies. I disagree. I think it's because he's the dumb blonde of American journalism, so awed by his proximity to power that he buys watever he's being sold.
I doubt I'll ever listen to Woodward on Larry King Live again without a neon sign flashing in my mind: Dumb blonde. Dumb blonde.
Or consider her skewering of David Gergen, who remarked, "While the benchmarks may seem like sort of a Washington game, in some ways, they're a very important prelude to the United States beginning to look for a way to disengage." Clear the way, folks, Arianna's whipped out a pair of sardonic knives:
A prelude to beginning to look for a way to disengage? In other words, let's wait six more months to see how things are going, the, if this latest in a long line of unmet benchmarks also goes unmet, we can begin to commence to initiate the starting of thinking about the mulling over of the consideration of a possible path that could, in time, lead us to begin to commence to start looking for a means that could, with any luck, result in America beginning to commence to start withdrawing from Iraq. Eventually.
Or the wry, painful observation that "We may yet reach a point where the only sector of scientific inquiry that is safe from the anti-science mobs on the Right is weapons research."
She also fires off some cunning analysis too, as she reviews the Bush administration's sanction of torture. Many critics have cited the need for revenge, or desperation for results, or general depravity or the desire to carve out more authoritarian territory for the unitary executive. While acknowledging that these other motives probably are play, Huffington makes an additional argument seemingly self-evident in its simplicity:
But there's also a way in which torture is a by-product of the well-known Bush laziness: the 9-5 workday, the long summer vacations, the impatience with detail. Torture is trying to get intelligence on the cheap.
The one oddity in the book--which can be skipped, obviously--is that each chapter closes with a kind of recap summary of the section's material that settles into a far duller and more prosaic voice (I suspect an editor urged this upon author). These closings are headed:Why the Right Was Wrong About [fill in the blank: Iraq, the economy, health care, etc.]. Huffington has a kind of giddy zest in her writing, particularly evident in book length, and these tacked-on afterthought summations appear to be an attempt to rein her in and make her less brash and more serious. This is not a good idea. She is at her best when running unhampered, and praise the heavens she's on our side and is the bigger-than-life personality--and writer-- that she is.