Ed Whelan Completes His Descent into Hackery

I've been debating all day whether or not to respond to this act of astounding immaturity and intellectual cowardice.  On the one hand, this "outing" hits pretty close to home.  In addition to being a long time reader and admirer of Publius' writing, it was my post (quoted by Publius) that seems to have gotten under Whelan's skin and caused him to lash out.  On the other hand, writing about this only draws more attention to it, which is the last thing I want to do.  In light of the fact that Publius has himself now written a post about this, though, I feel more comfortable addressing the subject here.

To quickly recap, I wrote a short post about Whelan a few weeks ago that described his basic M.O.:

This is Whelan's role in the conservative world, his niche. He's the guy Republicans look to when they need to discredit a Democratic legal or judicial nominee. He pores over their record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist. Whelan knows this is what he's doing. It's willful. He's essentially a legal hitman, someone who provides the "expert" opinion that the right wing echo chamber then uses as the basis of its attack campaign.

Andrew Sullivan linked to the post at the time, which prompted Whelan to write a sputtering, angry retort. Clearly the guy is very thin-skinned. Meanwhile, in a much more thoughtful series of posts, Publius (who has been blogging at Obsidian Wings for years) has been systematically dismantling a number of Whelan's rather ridiculous attacks on various Obama nominees, Harold Koh in particular. Then, in a post yesterday, Publius highlighted a rather scathing critique of Whelan's latest attack on Sonia Sotomayor by conservative legal blogger Eugene Volokh. Publius ended the post by quoting from my post about Whelan (the passage where I called him a "legal hitman").

Whelan responded by publishing Publius' real identity on the National Review website and sending him an email saying "now who's the hitman, you coward and idiot."

Um, it's still you, Ed, but thanks for proving it.

It's really difficult to put into words just how despicable and childish this behavior is. This is a man who was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. He's currently the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And he's acting like a six-year-old.

In his post outing Publius, Whelan claims that he is doing the world a service by "exposing an irresponsible anonymous blogger." The entire tone of the post, however, is petty and childish. It's clear that Whelan's only motive is getting back at someone who was critical of him. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine someone who less fits the stereotype of a mud-slinging anonymous blogger than Publius, whose posts are invariably professorial in content and tone. Indeed, if you compare Publius' posts to those that Whelan churns out daily at the National Review, the contrast is rather stark.

Whelan is unquestionably a brilliant man. He graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law School, was a Supreme Court clerk, and has had a successful career as an attorney. Which is why the jarringly hackish nature of his political writing is so striking. If you go to Bench Memos, the blog he writes at the National Review, and scan down through the posts, you'll see no hint whatsoever of the legal mind we all know that Whelan possesses. Instead, you'll see a series of dumbed-down partisan attacks written by someone who is functioning as a partisan advocate, not as a commentator. Take, for example, the post that drew the attention of Eugene Volokh. In that post, Whelan tries to take a joke Judge Sotomayor once told and turn it into some sort of indictment of her judicial philosophy. Not only is the post utterly clownish in its premise, but Whelan's entire critique is based on the notion that Supreme Court justices shouldn't be pondering the "policy implications" of their decisions, a suggestion that Volokh quickly dismantles. But here's the thing. Whelan was a Supreme Court clerk. He knows that this is a stupid point. He knows all of the justices on the Court, including the conservative ones, explicitly grapple with the policy implications of their decisions in virtually every case. But his goal here is not to provide actual insight into anything. His goal, as always, is to provide political fodder to Republicans. That's what he does.

Another good example is his very next post, where he focuses on a recent statement Sotomayor made (no context provided) where she said she doesn't "know what liberal means." He then attempts to play gotcha by pointing to a 1983 New York Times article which quotes then D.A. Sotomayor as saying "[n]o matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.” Whelan goes on to explain the earth-shattering significance of two out-of-context statements made a quarter of a century apart that don't really contradict each other anyway. The post then descends into an attack on liberal judges generally. It reads like a Jeff Foxworthy routine ("you know you're a liberal judge if . . . ").

This kind of stuff is Hannity-esque on the political hackery scale. But Whelan knows this. He's too smart not to. And I think that's why he's so thin-skinned. Getting called out on your hackery is tough if you're someone who takes pride in your intelligence. It's embarrassing. So Whelan reacted by lashing out and "outing" one of his most thoughtful and persistent critics. It's school-yard bully kind of stuff. An act of extreme insecurity.  

The reality is that if you don't think your work product can withstand the scrutiny of a few anonymous bloggers, then you have no business publishing it. And if your ego can't withstand being criticized by people who write under pseudonyms, then you're far too insecure to be blogging for a living. 

But since I doubt Whelan is going anywhere anytime soon, I'm sure we can all look forward to reading about why every judge or lawyer Obama appoints during the next four (or eight) years is, for various reasons, unfit for the job.