A Blogger's Lament
…but someone is wrong on the Internet!
In a comment about politics, Kevin Drum writes, “I sure feel crazier these days. How about you?” Yes, I think I do feel crazy, because almost every day lately I am flabbergasted by a subset of people for whom all political conversation is treated as if it’s some kind of kabuki dance. It frustrates me to no end, and if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ll offer an example.
There is one necessary piece of background information — the depressing Web site Newsmax published a column by a guy named John L. Perry outlining all the reasons it would make sense for the military to depose Barack Obama, all but advocating that it happen.
Now set that aside and consider something I wrote yesterday:
…readers ask who I think would be a successful Republican candidate in 2012. I take this to mean “someone who could plausibly defeat President Obama’s bid for re-election.”
My somewhat uninformed guesses: David Petraeus and Colin Powell (who’d have all kinds of difficulty winning the primary). These accomplished generals share one related trait: deep credibility as men who are serious about national security, enabling them to run as sane, experienced stewards, rather than bellicose idiots so desperate to seem toughest on terrorism that they spend the primaries calling for “doubling Gitmo” and competing to see who would torture in more contrived ticking time bomb situations.
They’re also both post-partisan figures of the kind that Americans seem to like, haven’t got long voting records to be picked apart, and can nevertheless credibly claim more executive experience than President Obama. I’m sure there are other candidates who could also mount a credible challenge, though I don’t know who they are.
Obviously there is a difference between saying “David Petraeus is the man with the best shot at beating President Obama in 2012,” and saying, “I want David Petraeus to run for president and win in 2012.” As it happens, I very clearly said the former, and I don’t actually know who my ideal candidate in 2012 is, or whether I’ll vote for President Obama or whoever runs against him, or even whether I’ll cast a ballot at all.
But okay, some folks took my post as a statement that David Petraeus is my ideal 2012 candidate — probably due to analysis I offered about the likelihood that he’d run on a saner foreign policy platform than other Republicans. I don’t particularly mind that mistaken assumption. It is in the nature of blogging that some nuances get lost, whether due to sloppiness by the author or the reader. I am guilty on both sides all the time.
What I mind is the blogger Doug J at Balloon Juice, a reasonably popular blog, who read the post I excerpted above and wrote this:
Maybe I’m way off base on this, but in my opinion, the Conor Friedersdorfs and Nicole Wallaces of the right aren’t so different from coupmeister John L. Perry. The idea of David Petraeus sweeping in and becoming president in 2012 isn’t unethical or unconstitutional, but I can’t help but think that Friedersdorf and Wallace simply want an institution they see as Republican—the military—to depose a Democratic president they dislike. (Friedersorf’s other preferred candidate is Colin Powell.)
The desire to depose Obama runs much deeper on the right—even the so-called moderate right—than anyone is willing to admit. The Perry piece wasn’t any kind of outlier.
Though I realize that this isn’t any more egregious than all sorts of stuff that gets published each day in the blogosphere, and that I may be trying the patience of readers by highlighting it at such length, I can only say that for whatever reason I feel a particular contempt for that post, and were its author sitting in a dunk tank right now I’d forgo throwing baseballs and just use my fist to depress the lever so as to reciprocate his sense of fair play.
Imagine it! Writing that David Petraues is the guy who’d enjoy the most success were he to run on the Republican ticket, and being told as a result that deep down you want the military to depose President Obama — a notion that the bulk of Balloon Juice commenters accept as sound analysis.
There is, in truth, zero desire on the moderate right “to depose Obama,” an absurd assertion all its own, but what bothers me here is the ease with which a literate person considered worth reading by his fellow citizens jumps to the most absurd conclusions about someone — me in this case — because I am on the right. Insofar as conversations across ideology are necessary for a healthy polity, it is depressing to see how many erroneous assumptions his orthodoxies of thought so quickly produce — that I dislike President Obama, that I am a Republican, that I see the military as Republican, that I harbor desires about the 2012 election that I will not admit, and that I want the president deposed, if you care for a list.
I understand your anger. I recently left a site where I liked a lot of the contributors just because this kind of thing continuously happened. Doug J. obviously used your post about Petreaus as a weapon and this is what I hate — it’s intellectually dishonest and it’s punkish, a cowardly way to push an agenda and smear your perceived enemies. Having to defend against this seems silly, therefore making it even more frustrating.
— mike farmer · Oct 1, 11:00 AM · #
I reckon he read the link Noah posted, then read my enthusiastic response to Noah’s posting it, and then came to his conclusion about what “the right” actually wants.
That would make him, in this case at least, stupid.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 11:09 AM · #
“I recently left a site where I liked a lot of the contributors just because this kind of thing continuously happened.”
This was a bad sentence — I didn’t like the contributors because this kind of thing continuously happened — oh well, you know what I mean.
— mike farmer · Oct 1, 11:37 AM · #
There is, in truth, zero desire on the moderate right “to depose Obama,” an absurd assertion all its own
That is, quite simply, a LIE. Your proposal of Petraeus is a pure desperation move to find someone, anyone that can “depose” O, Petraeus is not even a republican and has publically disavowed political ambition. You proposed two military extreme long shots…..DougJ is wrong if he is theorizing you have coups and juntas on the brain, but I have to ask, if you are going to propose someone that has SAID PUBLICALLY they are NOT interested in running for office…..why not Condi, who at least is a republican?
Powell is too old, and he voted for O, and the base would never accept him EXCEPT as part of a Palin ticket, and I guarantee he would never ……Palin is the reason he came out for O publically.
— matoko_chan · Oct 1, 01:34 PM · #
Just an aside, have read the BJ lexicon?
It is hilarious.
Some of the entries are my work. ;)
— matoko_chan · Oct 1, 01:38 PM · #
Why not McCrystal after he resigns when Obama declines to throw more troops at the Graveyard of Empires?
Oh yeah….I forgot…..he orchestrated the cover-up of Tillman’s death during the Bush admin’s 2004 Torture Tour for Re-election.
hahaha
you guyz are screwed.
— matoko_chan · Oct 1, 01:57 PM · #
I’m sympathetic, Conor. But one of the fascinating aspects of the blogosphere is that thoughtful, honest blogs and sensationalistic blogs have both managed to thrive. There’s no crowding-out effect, because there’s no limit to the available space.
There are, if you will, two different strategies for successful blogging. The first privileges influence. It aims to appeal to a comparatively narrow audience of readers seeking thought-provoking yet intellectually honest conversations. I read your blog, although I’m on the other side of the political spectrum, because you seem interested in figuring things out.
The other strategy aims at accumulating an audience, which seems to be fundamentally inconsistent with intellectual honesty. The blog posts that tend, on the whole, to attract the most attention are those which make extreme claims. Telling an audience what it wants to hear, and providing it with fresh evidence to confirm its preexisting beliefs, is a sure-fire means of bringing it back for more.
When someone misconstrues an argument, whether deliberately or through simple sloppiness, there needs to be a mechanism in place to force them to reckon with their error. Old-line print publications that blended reportage with opinion felt obliged to police their columnists, because the credibility of the news they peddled could be adversely affected by columnists exaggerations or mistakes. Blogs that aim for popularity actually face a countervailing set of incentives – policing mistakes, aiming for nuance, and respecting opposing points of view are likely to depress traffic to the site. The closest parallel is probably the difference between broadcast news – which, as the name implies, tries to reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible – and cable news, whose profitability rests on appealing intensely to a small fragment of the general population.
But don’t lost all hope. Intellectually honest bloggers will have their posts distorted or ridiculed, and face opprobrium from loyalists on their own side, who doubt their adherence to the one true faith. But they’ll also, in general, gain access to the more limited audience that actually shapes opinion and policy. It’s a trade off; it’s almost impossible to have it both ways. But if you can shrug off the attacks made in bad-faith or manifest ignorance, and continue to make arguments in an open and honest fashion, what you lose in readership you’ll gain in influence.
— Cynic · Oct 1, 02:08 PM · #
…but just for the heck of it, let me reiterate my objection to the point you actually made in that post: general officers tend to make lousy politicians. There are any number of reasons for this – their lifetime of estrangement from civil society, the hazards of characteristic military bluntness in the political realm, their expectation of respect or deference inculcated by their senior rank, and their lack of experience with domestic issues among them. They tend to be good executives, but lousy campaigners. Even years after making the transition to the civilian realm, they struggle with these hurdles; it’s tough to imagine Colin Powell kissing babies.
In other words, the candidates you identify (and others like them) look awfully appealing on paper, but their candidacies tend to fall apart on the stump. No major-party nominee since Eisenhower has lacked experience on the campaign trail and in elective office. The one significant exception – third-party candidate Ross Perot – provides a vivid example of the dangers of running an unexperienced candidate with sterling credentials in some other field.
The generals might well prove to be good executives, but they’re actually the least likely prospects for winning elections.
— Cynic · Oct 1, 02:16 PM · #
“Blogs that aim for popularity actually face a countervailing set of incentives – policing mistakes, aiming for nuance, and respecting opposing points of view are likely to depress traffic to the site. “
Market failure! NEB stat! Because a Great Nation deserves Great Blogs!
— Tony Comstock · Oct 1, 04:23 PM · #
Cheer up. Doug J got a lot of pushback from his own audience on that one.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Oct 1, 06:49 PM · #
Hee! So, if I understand correctly:
1) Wanting Obama not to win reelection = Wanting Obama to be deposed.
2) Many opinion writers on the right have expressed an opinion that they would prefer Obama not to win reelection.
3) Therefore, many opinion writers on the right want Obama to be deposed.
This argument seems flawed. In particular, it doesn’t explain how or why Conor’s opinions are racist.
— J Mann · Oct 1, 07:17 PM · #
You know, you’re quite obviously right about this specific circumstance.
But as to the general idea, of guessing at a writer’s motivations, is something that I think is in bounds.
I say that because I got awfully tired of taking the right’s most polished justifications at face value during the Bush administration. I learned my lesson— I read you now instead of the Corner. But consider the evolution of the GOP party line on Iraq (cakewalk/WE WIN!!1!/everything’s awesome/don’t talk about the war/WE WIN!!1!/ OMG appeasement!) or torture (it didn’t happen/it was a few lowly bad apples blowing off steam/torture is a moral imperative).
DougJ was off base here, but I don’t think that the entire enterprise of trying to figure out an unspoken subtext is off limits.
— the commentariat you wish you had · Oct 1, 07:31 PM · #
This is sort of tangential, but I think it captures the spirit of much of the discussion.
I’ve been plotting a novel in the back of my mind. It involves a gullible (apolitical) private investigator who is investigating leads to his discovering information that becomes very pertinent to a presidential race and could have an enormous effect.
The President, in attempting to keep the information under wraps, tries to convince the PI to keep quiet on the grounds that the other guy wants to DEPOSE the PRESIDENT and that is UNAMERICAN and PRACTICALLY A COUP! As such, it is the PI’s responsibility to help the President because these people HATE THEIR COUNTRY when/because it is controlled by the guy that was ELECTED three years ago!
The opposing candidate, on the other hand, talks to the PI and tries to get him to turn over the proof of what the PI knows on the grounds that the President (a Republican) is seeking to turn congress (half-Democratic at this point) Republican so that Republicans will control ALL BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT and that is what FASCIST WANT and therefore it is his patriotic duty to unseat this TOTALITARIAN DESPOT!
That’s what I feel political discourse has come down to these days.
— Trumwill · Oct 1, 09:20 PM · #
Do you know why you guyz are screwed Conor?
This is why.
The right has evolved a base and a political class in their thrall that are only just barely smart enough to hold onto populist power.
My hypothesis is that this is because the protestant clerical class in this country is non-intellectual and non-elite.
There is no white protestant intellectual tradition.
Sully cites Aquinas and Niebuhr…….but they are catholics.
The Protestant intellectual tradition is Willard Skousen and Jerry Falwell…neither of which are exactly intellectual giants.
You have evolved into the party of not-very-bright.
— matoko_chan · Oct 1, 10:01 PM · #
Conor obviously wants to people to not get sick, and if they get sick, to die quickly. It’s all coming together.
— mike farmer · Oct 1, 10:07 PM · #
wants people to not get sick — what’s wrong with my typing?
— mike farmer · Oct 1, 10:26 PM · #
I read your post and did not think you were making any kind of subliminal coup reference. My only thought reading it was, “How Republican is Powel really?” I know very little about Petraeus, but my few fiends who worked in the state department thought that Powel was absolutely excellent at running it, and they are all liberal. I am fairly liberal too (although I try to mostly vote for the “competent” party now) but I would have been happy to have Powel as president. He seemed extremely capable and experienced.
— josh · Oct 1, 10:35 PM · #
Matoko, Niebuhr was a Protestant (Evangelical, even). You’re probably thinking of Richard John Neuhaus. Also, Petraeus is a registered Republican (in Vermont, I believe).
— zak · Oct 2, 06:20 PM · #
Oh yeah….i did confuse them.
mybad.
still zak….american protestantism is populist and anti-intellectual. Robertson, Dobson, Falwell, etc.
Buffoons, actually.
I think the GOP is probably 85% white evangelical christianists at this point.
The party platform is religious doctrine….can’t get elected unless you love Jesus, are a creationist, anti-abortion, homophobic, support virtual chattel slavery of women and children and christian shariah law,) now can you?
hehe, it isnt about “culture war issues”… it is about evangelical christian issues.
The New Evangelical Christianist Republican Party.
— matoko_chan · Oct 3, 12:16 AM · #
Just…ow.
You’re a damn good voice to have around. You’re not taking the easy road by going after Limbaugh et. al, or the pro-torture right, but it’s good work. And I also appreciate your non-ideological work about the role of journalists in creating accountability.
So that’s why it’s midnight and I’m sitting in bed on my laptop, having to explain the huge backstory to my wife why I’m staring at my computer and venting while I write something over at balloon juice…
— Justin · Oct 3, 04:30 AM · #