David Brooks Discovers Nuance
In his op-ed in today's New York Times, David Brooks leaps to Senator Clinton's defense regarding her vote on the 2002 Iraq war resolution:
Yep, here it is:
Or maybe he's just a wanker.
Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?Brooks just can't say enough good things about Clinton's wonderfully nuanced approach to the vote:
I mean, have the people calling for her apology actually read the speeches she delivered before the war? Have they read her remarks during the war resolution debate, when she specifically rejected a pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Saddam? Did they read the passages in which she called for a longer U.N. inspections regime and declared, “I believe international support and legitimacy are crucial”? . . .
On the one hand, she rejected the Bush policy of pre-emptive war. On the other hand, she also rejected the view that the international community “should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it.” Drawing on the lessons of Bosnia, she said sometimes the world had to act, even if the big powers couldn’t agree.
She sought a third way: more U.N. resolutions, more inspections, more diplomacy, with the threat of force reserved as a last resort.
When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.According to Brooks, Clinton's approach to the Iraq war vote demonstrates what an excellent president she'd make, it shows her ability to "see problems in their complexities." You know, it's funny, I seem to remember a certain Senator from Massachusetts who voted the same way as Clinton on the Iraq war resolution and for the exact same reasons. Here's what John Kerry said as he cast his vote in October 2002:
I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein. As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice."Seeing as Kerry's explanation of his vote is substantively indistinguishable from Clinton's, Brooks must have been equally blown away by Kerry's ability to "see problems in their complexities." I bet if we look back, we can find a column from 2004 where Brooks calls Kerry "the fox to Bush's hedgehog" and praises him for his willingness to see both sides of a complex issue.
Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies. In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.
If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.
Yep, here it is:
The certainties of the cold war were gone and new threats appeared. It fell to one man, John Kerry, the Human Nebula, to bring fog out of the darkness, opacity out of the confusion, bewilderment out of the void. Kerry established himself early as the senator most likely to pierce through the superficial clarity and embrace the miasma. . . .Huh. Weird. I guess Brooks was against nuance before he was for it.
In laying out the Kerry Doctrine — that in voting on a use-of-force resolution that is not a use-of-force resolution, the opposite of the correct answer is also the correct answer — Kerry was venturing off into the realm of Post-Cartesian Multivariate Co-Directionality that would mark so many of his major foreign policy statements. . . .
Kerry has made clear that if he is elected president, the nation will never face a caveat shortage. He has established the foragainst method, which has enabled him to be foragainst the war in Iraq, foragainst the Patriot Act and foragainst No Child Left Behind. If you decide to vote for him this year, there would be a correctness in that judgment, but if you decide to vote for George Bush, that would also be correct.
Or maybe he's just a wanker.
posted by A.L. at 11:58 PM
5 Comments:
I vote for wanker.
I don't know. It seems to me that when Brooks describes Hillary as a President:
[W]ho would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.
He is saying essentially the same thing, that she will be too bogged down in nuance to see the big picture and to make the tough decisions that are necessary. About the same as he said about Kerry (albeit with more nuance in the wording).
I don't know. It seems to me that when Brooks describes Hillary as a President...He is saying essentially the same thing, that she will be too bogged down in nuance to see the big picture and to make the tough decisions that are necessary. About the same as he said about Kerry (albeit with more nuance in the wording).
Perhaps, though it seems to me he is contrasting her style to Bush's with the implication that her style would be a refreshing change, given the results of six years of Bush-style governing.
Great post. See also Greg Sargent at TPM for a couple of other angles:
1. Brooks defending Hillary as a proxy for his own non-apology and
2. The contrast to Brooks' own 2003 predictions that the war opponents would never own to their "errors": "I doubt the people of Europe will say: We were wrong," he wrote.
Hilary is what Dr. Phil calls an "enabler." What do we call Hilary? A leader? A person of conscience? A legislator?
Mistakes happen. But THREE years later? The Iraq Invasion violated the Just War Doctrine (not that Hilary is a Christianist, mind you, except when it comes to plying her values to the Right Wing as a fellow player).
For once, can a politician carpetbagger be honest with an agenda that placates the worst instincts of a nation? Per her handlers, she has been a "moderate." Moderate, at what? Holding her opinion polls to the winds to find what the public accepts? What if that public is Nazi? Will the winds blow in her favor, then, too?
Her husband Bill entrusted universal health care to his co-partner and wife, who with Ira Magaziner destroyed all possibility that universal health care would materialize in 1994. Her fingers held to the wind apparently did not discern the Republican and national angst over her tyranny of health care. (And people complain about Cheney's oil barons doing the very same thing?)
Like other lemmings, she has endorsed every Bush-Cheney effort in a spurious Middle East war, until her handlers decided the winds had changed, and so should she. Such leadership! Such courage! Manny Greenwald's opinion research changed Hilary's opinion of an unjust war. Imagine that? How many lemmings followed Hilary to that conclusion, before opinion polls changed her own recalcitrance of the Invasion and Occupation?
Leaders are marked by good judgment. They form public opinion and mold goodwill. What has Hilary done? She FOLLOWS, because she's too blind to ambition to lead, because a "vast Right-wing conspiracy has dubbed her philandering husband for political reasons." Were they wrong, Hilary, or were you just another enabler to help yourself to future spoils, of which HilaryCare was just the tip to eject Democrats for a Republican Congress? Poor Hilary. Poor nation. That "vast Right-wing conspiracy" was right about your philandering husband (even if they were wrong to impeach him), but she stood by him, because HER future required her to put her fingers to the wind and see where the winds blew.
They blew her right into Iraq. They blew her to support an unjust war. They blew her to defeat universal health care. Hilary's "winds" are too toxic for the nation, even if they work for her. My how the winds change, and Hilary changes with them, reluctantly. Since she has NO convictions of her own, she just blows like a whale. She spouts off without any conviction, and then blames a "right-wing conspiracy" for screwing-up universal health care and her votes to enable GWB's war in the Middle East.
Where will the winds take her next?
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