The Edjumucation of Joe Klein

Joe Klein has been one of my least-favorite pundits for a while now, exhibiting all of the standard qualities of the Beltway mindset, valuing "authenticity" that usually translates to Republicanism, using Vietnam-era stereotypes to describe Democrats, letting personal hatreds of specific politicians color his columns, etc. Chief among his concerns was bashing the rabid, mean, vile screeds of the Internet left, who he considered unserious and wholly without merit (as well as reflexively anti-military).

Then Klein did a strange thing. He got involved in a blog with Time magazine. And so he had to come up against day-to-day criticism of his assumptions and his writing. And guess what? It's changed him. As much as he would be loath to admit it, it's given him a different perspective. He's not all the way there and I don't suspect he ever will be. But he's at least willing to confront arguments that he would dismiss in the past.

As readers know, I've been critical of the tone of the left-wing blogosphere in the past. But I think that Yglesias raises an important point here and anyone reading the comments section of any Swampland post knows that troglyditic right-wing cavedwellers fester there, in a vomitously vile manner, too.

And I'd add this: Radio. I was driving into Springfield, Ill last night for the Obama festivities and caught the ever-vile Sean Hannity "interviewing" the even-more-vile Dick Morris about Hillary. Just disgraceful...and they were mild compared to the crap I've heard from Rush and others over the years.

It's obvious that the current level of vitriol on the left is a reaction to nearly twenty years of sewage emanating from Rush et al. It's also a product of the times: There's a whole generation of people who believe that serious political discourse consists of Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift screaming at each other. The intemperance on the left has three other sources (1) justifiable fury over the Bush adminstration (2) justifiable fury over the way the media treated Clinton and, to a certain extent, Bush and (3) ideologues of any sort tend to be obnoxious.

I don't necessarily agree with the ideologues/obnoxious point, but he's starting to take a critical look at recent history (while not necessarily his role in it). And I agree that his constant exposure to criticism has impacted this change in behavior. If it takes screaming to get some basic sense of fairness, then scream away. I'd rather journalists weren't affected by either side's ability to "work the refs." But they clearly have been through the past decade or so, in mainly a one-way direction, and this has to change. Without Joe Klein's experience in the blogosphere, you would simply not see a column like this:

...politicians have sacred missions too. Their duty is threefold: to be judicious about sending the troops off to war, to give the military everything it needs to complete the mission and, if it appears the mission is futile or compromised, to change it or end it. "You have to ask who is really undermining this mission?" says Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point graduate. "Didn't the Bush Administration undermine it from the start by going to war without sufficient cause, without sufficient planning, without sufficient equipment for our troops? Even now, I would argue that the Bush Administration is undermining this surge by focusing merely on the military part of the mission, ignoring the need to reform the Iraqi government, to find a regional diplomatic solution and, of course, ignoring the real facts on the ground."

The facts on the ground are dismal. The near impossibility of the mission is already apparent. The Iraqis promised three additional brigades to help secure Baghdad, but military sources tell me that two of those brigades are Kurdish, and there is a question how many will actually show up. Even if they do arrive in numbers, Kurds a) don't speak Arabic and b) don't like Arabs very much, which may, well, undermine the mission. There was a coordinated series of seven bombs detonated in the northern city of Kirkuk last week, which may be a sign that the long-feared battle between Kurds and Arabs for control of that oil-rich region is about to begin. That makes it doubly unlikely that the Kurdish brigades will deploy to Baghdad. Furthermore, whack-a-mole happens: there are indications the Shi'ite militias are going to ground or leaving Baghdad to fight elsewhere, perhaps in places like Kirkuk, which means, Senator Reed says, "we'll be doing their job for them, fighting the Sunnis in Baghdad."

"We're on the brink of a decisive battle for Baghdad," Lieberman said on the Senate floor. But that was wrong too: the counterinsurgency tactics General Petraeus will use are gradual, not "decisive" in the traditional military sense. We are not on the brink of anything except a long hard slog. I suspect Lieberman understands this but is hyping the mission for dramatic effect. If so, he is raising unfair expectations for the troops and the nation. I'd say that comes pretty damn close to undermining the mission.

Joe Klein's not going to become a liberal darling. But his willingness to engage his critics and take lessons from them is noble. For more than most journalists who've forayed into the blogosphere.