QandO

September 02, 2004

Slate's dissembling Saletan
Posted by McQ

Yikes. I wandered over to Slate for some unearthly reason and ran across this screed by William Saletan.

From the beginning he gets it wrong and it goes south from there. Remarking on Zell Miller's speech he trots out this premise:

The 2004 election is becoming a referendum on your right to hold the president accountable.

Well if you're in the tinfoil hat brigade, perhaps. But for the rest of us, as was stated up front in Miller's speech, it was about who we feel is going to better protect our families. But the premise? A blinding flash of the obvious I suppose. All elections are referendums on the president and to my knowldege no one has interfered with Mr. Saletan's right to do so.

But let's let him go ahead anyway, shall we?

The Dems are desparate to talk about the economy because they think they have some traction there. So with some major warping Saletan uses the Miller speech to do what?

Attack tax cuts. And he can't even do that honestly.

The case against President Bush is simple. He sold us his tax cuts as a boon for the economy, but more than three years later, he has driven the economy into the ground.

WTF? Where has this guy been? Let's see they inherited a recession, then 7 months later 9/11 occurred which compounded it and we found ourselves in a war after that, yet in the two short years since then, with the aid of tax cuts the economy has rebounded spectacularly.

I mean this is just "if I say it maybe they won't call me on it" stuff. He can't seriously think a serious reader is going to buy off on this.

Of course you could consider it just a rhetorical device he used so he could say the same sort of thing, rhetorically speaking, about Iraq.

He sold us a war in Iraq as a necessity to protect the United States against weapons of mass destruction, but after spending $200 billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, and after searching the country for more than a year, we've found no such weapons.

Actually he sold us on the idea that a rogue country who was defying the UN and the sanctions it imposed, with proven ties to terrorism and a history of WMD production and use, could pose a threat and in the war on terrorism we could no longer afford the luxury of sitting on our fat behinds and hoping we could "contain" such a threat. In other words, although Mr. Sletan apparently missed it, the world had changed. But if he said it like that, well, he wouldn't have a point would he?

But cleverly, our boy pushes on. False premise and discredited "supporting points" in hand he concludes:

Tonight the Republicans had a chance to explain why they shouldn't be fired for these apparent screw-ups.

Well, I told you he was clever, didn't I? "Apparent screw-ups" builds in "wiggle room". God forbid he should actually take a stand.

But let's bite. Lets swallow the premise, line and sinker and go with Saletan on this one.

Here's what Cheney said about the economic situation: "People are returning to work. Mortgage rates are low, and home ownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working." But mortgage rates were low before Bush took office. Home ownership was already at an all-time high. And more than a million more people had jobs than have them today.

But, but ... mortgage rates stayed low even through a rescession and into a war. Home ownership was already at an all-time high but now its at and even greater high. And we lost a million jobs immediately after 9/11 (you do remember 9/11 don't you Mr. Saletan?) which have now been regained, with a unemployment rate of 5.5% and going lower. A rate for which you Dems were mightly proud in 1996.

So, uh, maybe Cheney was right, huh?

"In Iraq, we dealt with a gathering threat," Cheney said. What about the urgent, nukes-any-day threat to the United States that supposedly warranted our expense of so much blood and treasure? Cheney was silent.

"A senator can be wrong for 20 years without consequence to the nation," said Cheney. "But a president always casts the deciding vote." What America needs in this time of peril, he argued, is "a president we can count on to get it right."

You can't make the case against Bush more plainly than that.

Well you can make a better case for Bush if you study Kerry's record for the last 20 years and then imagine (shudder) him making key decisions. We'd need a daily scorecard to keep up with what version and which side he was on today.

If the convention speeches are any guide, Republicans have run out of excuses for blowing the economy, blowing the surplus, and blowing our military resources and moral capital in the wrong country.

Well based on what I've read of your reasoning, Mr. Saletan, the only one blowing anything right now is you. You forgot all about that pesky Clinton/Gore recession, apparently 9/11 slipped your mind and the term 'war' doesn't seem to register in your "thinking" either.

So having made an exceedingly poor, no I'm not going to be that nice, non-existant case concerning the economy, you finally get to what you really wanted to push all along.

So they're going after the patriotism of their opponents. Here's what the convention keynoter, Miller, said tonight about Democrats and those who criticize the way President Bush has launched and conducted the Iraq war.

Oh is that what they're doing? We get a long quote which Saletan points to as proof of his charge:

While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

In [Democratic leaders'] warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

And Saletan's take on this?

Every one of these charges is demonstrably false. When Bush addressed Congress after 9/11, Democrats embraced and applauded him. In the Afghan war, they gave him everything he asked for. Most Democratic senators, including John Kerry and John Edwards, voted to give him the authority to use force in Iraq. During and after the war, they praised Iraq's liberation. Kerry has never said that any other country should decide when the United States is entitled to defend itself.

That was then, this is now. Must we quote the from the Democrat primary about Iraq and Kerry's new position, or at least position of choice at that time? Should we talk about Ted Kennedy's "he cooked it up in Texas" embrace of the war in Iraq? Or the snarling and snapping which has ensued ever since from the Democrat side? And Kerry has said he wanted our troops deployed only at the behest of the UN, but has since, if you can imagine, changed his position.

But more importantly than the lines Saletan quotes of Miller's speech, is the one he doesn't quote:

It is not their patriotism, it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking.

Guess it just got by him somehow.

But the important thing isn't the falsity of the charges, which Republicans continue to repeat despite press reports debunking them.

You mean like the economic nonsense you just tried to run past us?

The important thing is that the GOP is trying to quash criticism of the president simply because it's criticism of the president. The election is becoming a referendum on democracy.

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn't, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election.

Why is it that everytime Bush and company say something they're "trying to quash criticism" when its obvious by the inane criticism you're pounding out in your article that nothing could be further from the truth.

What you guys don't like is when they shoot back, do you, slugger?

Not every country works this way. In some countries, the commander in chief builds a propaganda apparatus that equates him with the military and the nation. If you object that he's making bad decisions and disserving the national interest, you're accused of weakening the nation, undermining its security, sabotaging the commander in chief, and serving a foreign power—the very charges Miller leveled tonight against Bush's critics.

And of course it never occurrs to Saletan that perhaps the way the accusations have been made may weaken the nation and do a disservice to its national interest. In Saletan's world all criticism is apparently 'legitimate' regardless of how outrageous it might be. What Saletan demands is the right to criticize with out consequence. He wants to run his mouth freely and take no responsbility for what it may bring. And if you try to point out what those consequences are, you're attacking his "patriotism" or trying to quash dissent.

Its a poor argument from a very weak position. But he's not done. Here he tries it again:

When patriotism is impugned, the facts go out the window. You're not allowed to point out that Bush shifted the rationale for the Iraq war further and further from U.S. national security—from complicity in 9/11 to weapons of mass destruction to building democracy to relieving Iraqis of their dictator—without explaining why American troops and taxpayers should bear the burden. You're not allowed to point out that the longer a liberator stays, the more he looks like an occupier. You're not allowed to propose that the enormous postwar expenses Bush failed to budget for be covered by repealing his tax cuts for the wealthy instead of further indebting every American child.

The fact that its being done every day by Kerry and his surrogates puts lie to his assertions that "you're not allowed" to say those things. The very fact that his nonsensical article exists in Slate points to what utter foolishness this collection of assertions is. Another way of saying it is: "Slaetan writes, therefore 'you're allowed'".

Again, and not to belabor the point, Saletan wants his criticism allowed ... but not the other guy's. He wants to have his say and the other guy to shut up.

Now we get to the whiny part:

If you dare to say these things, you're accused—as Kerry now stands accused by Cheney and Miller—of defaming America and refusing "to support American troops in combat." You're contrasted to a president who "is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America." You're derided, in Cheney's words, for trying to show al-Qaida "our softer side." Your Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts are no match for the vice president's five draft deferments.

Its all about "accusations". Saletan is hurt by 'accusations'. Well he's hurt if he and his ilk are the target of those accusations. For some reason he has no problem with hurling them willy nilly. One more time with feeling, folks. Willie Saletan wants to be able to have his say, but he wants the other guys to keep a lid on it.

Then we get to the irony. These last two are loaded with irony which apparently slips right past Willie S.

In his remarks, Miller praised Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee who "made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue." But there are three ways to make national security a campaign issue. One is to argue the facts of a particular question, as Kerry has done on Iraq. The second is to sweep aside all factual questions, as Cheney and Miller did tonight, with a categorical charge that the other party is indifferent or hostile to the country's safety. The third is to create a handy political fight, as Republicans did two years ago on the question of labor rights in the Department of Homeland Security, and frame it falsely as a national security issue in order to win an election.

So now you have two reasons to show up at the polls in November. One is to stop Bush from screwing up economic and foreign policy more than he already has. The other is to remind him and his propagandists that even after 9/11, you still have that right.

Who has the right Mr. Saletan?

You do. And have. And no one has stopped you from writing or speaking out.

To borrow a phrase: Just a reminder to you and your propagandists that even after 9/11, you still have that right.

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