Dailyhowler.com on Bush Admin: Among the ranks of history's greatest rubes

And though everyone knows it, very few in the media are willing to call them on it.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh052004.shtml


DRUM’S ALONG THE POTOMAC: We strongly recommend Drum’s report on Newsweek pundit Jonathan Alter. Alter appeared on Tuesday’s O’Franken Factor. According to transcripts from the man called “8rivers,” here’s one of Alter’s remarks about the Bush Admin:

ALTER: The level of incompetence is so staggering here, and yet there’s this gap between how astonishingly incompetent—and we can go over particulars in the last year if you want to—how astonishingly incompetent they’ve been and the perception is still of them as solid citizens...

As we think we mentioned last week, this is in many ways the problem confronting our mainstream pundits. From the start, they portrayed the Bush Admin as essentially competent; you might have concerns about Bush himself, but he had surrounded himself with highly capable aides. In fact, the thing that has most stood out about this Admin has been its apparent lack of competence. For example, if we take events at face value, they were played for fools by the Chalabi gang, those “heroes in error” discussed here yesterday. This seems to place the Bush Admin among the ranks of history’s greatest rubes. But it has been hard for pundits to state this point, because–as Alter’s comment suggests–the pundit corps’ basic talking-point has always been just the opposite. Result? The Admin has been “astonishingly incompetent,” Alter says. But because pundits have a hard time reversing their core appraisal, “the perception is still of them as solid citizens.”

Drum suggests you review what Alter told Franken, then compare it to his latest column in Newsweek. We think this is well worth doing. Did the guy who said these things to Franken actually write that Newsweek piece? If the Bush Admin is “astonishingly incompetent,” wouldn’t that be the obvious basis for a column? Not in the world of Washington pundits! They are very timidly inching away from a world-view they’ve recited quite well.