It's Time to Fire Bill Kristol

Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that Bill Kristol isn’t a particularly good writer, never has anything insightful or original to say, and has been embarrassingly wrong about everything for at least the last eight years. Even assuming the New York Times is fine with all of those things, there’s one thing that should be non-negotiable. At minimum, a newspaper needs to know that an opinion columnist is actually giving his or her honest opinion—however wrong or misguided that opinion is. There’s at least some value in that; readers are exposed to an alternative perspective and get to see how certain people view the world.

But when a writer demonstrates a willingness to express opinions he clearly doesn’t believe, in the pursuit of obvious ulterior motives, well that’s when a newspaper absolutely has to draw the line. You can’t allow someone to use your newspaper as a tool for propaganda, which is exactly what Bill Kristol does.

This morning, for instance, Bill Kristol wrote a column for the Weekly Standard in which he feigned outrage over the fact that Barack Obama did not select Hillary Clinton as his running mate. He ended the column with this:

Will the Democratic party, which is committed (to say the least) to gender equity, and which in fact has a 50 percent quota for female delegates, accept Obama’s imposition of a glass ceiling at its convention?

A modest suggestion to my justifiably outraged Democratic friends: Hillary’s name should be placed in nomination not for the presidency (Obama won that more or less fair and square)--but for the vice presidency. It would be an interesting roll call vote.

No one who has ever read Bill Kristol believes for even one second that he is genuinely outraged over the fact that Obama chose Joe Biden over Hillary Clinton or that he thinks doing so amounts to the “imposition of a glass ceiling" in the Democratic party. The whole column is transparently disingenuous, an obvious attempt to stir up conflict within the Democratic party. Just look at his final “suggestion” to Clinton delegates--that they place her name in nomination for Vice President. Kristol doesn’t actually think this is a good idea or that it would any way advance the interests of gender equality (which he doesn’t care about anyway); rather, he wants the Democratic Convention to be a fiasco because he thinks that would benefit the Republican party.

This is the difference between Kristol and some other conservative columnists. Kristol is, first and foremost, a party apparatchik and a propagandist. At least half the time, he’s not trying to persuade people to come around to his point of view, but rather to come around to a point of view that would advance his party’s interests. There’s a BIG difference between those two goals.

Not only that, but Kristol clearly isn’t a free agent. He coordinates his propaganda with the Republican party and the McCain campaign. His “glass ceiling” column today was timed to coincide with the release of the McCain campaign's new ad:

This new Sunday ad is titled "Passed Over." Aimed clearly at the 18 million disappointed Democrats who voted for her during the long primary season, the ad asks why Clinton was passed over for the No. 2 spot.

It shows Clinton and says:

"She won millions of votes.

"But isn't on his ticket.

"Why?

"For speaking the truth.

"On his plans . . .”

The McCain campaign is obviously trying to woo Clinton voters by stoking a sense of grievance among them. Kristol is using his platform to assist them in that endeavor.

With Kristol, as with Karl Rove and other political operatives, you never know if you’re getting their honest opinion or if they’re just feeding you a line. The latter is usually a safer assumption. And that’s just not acceptable from a respectable news outlet like the New York Times. The Times needs to hold its columnists to at least a minimal standard of integrity, and Bill Kristol clearly doesn’t meet that. He needs to be fired immediately.