Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. It’s a revered institution even if the ever-silly Princeton Marching Band occasionally jumps in their fountain and plays ‘Louie Louie’. Ms. Slaughter is very concerned about the lack of bipartisanship in our foreign policy.
A funny thing is happening in American politics: The fiercest battle is no longer between the left and the right but between partisanship and bipartisanship. The Bush administration, which has been notorious for playing to its hard-right base, has started reaching across the aisle…
With a start like that, what hope can we hold out for the rest of the column? But Slaughter has attempted to inoculate herself from my criticism.
From the left, many progressives have responded to the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration by trying to purge their fellow liberals…
In the blogosphere, pillorying Hillary Clinton is a full-time sport…
Left-liberal blog attacks on moderate liberals have reached the point where “mainstream media” bloggers such as Joe Klein at Time magazine are wading in to call for a truce, only to get lambasted themselves.
So, how can I respond to Ms. Slaughter without contributing to the problem she has diagnosed? The short answer is that I cannot. But given her solution (emphasis mine), I feel justified in having my say.
It’s time, then, for a bipartisan backlash. Politicians who think we need bargaining to fix the crises we face should appear side by side with a friend from the other party — the consistent policy of the admirably bipartisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Candidates who accept that the winner of the 2008 election is going to need a lot of friends across the aisle — not least to get out of Iraq — should make a point of finding something to praise in the other party’s platform. And as for the rest of us, the consumers of a steady diet of political vitriol, every time we read a partisan attack, we should shoot — or at least spam — the messenger.
First, let me point to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial that, as far as I can tell, contained zero factually accurate sentences. The piece completely mischaracterizes the issues and the law involved in the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program before concluding:
The President should announce immediately that he is rescinding his concession to put these foreign wiretaps under the FISA court. He should say he is doing so as an urgent matter of national security as Commander in Chief because Congress has refused to respond in good faith by modernizing the law to let the U.S. eavesdrop on terrorists who wish us deadly harm. Then let Democrats explain why they’re willing to put partisanship above the safety of America.
How is the blogosphere to respond to such outrages against the public discourse, if not with vitriol?
And where am I to find the moderate Republican that will stand ‘side by side’ with me and denounce this rhetoric? Let me say, for the record, that I will gratefully embrace any Republican that is willing to stand up and admit that the president broke the FISA law, mischaracterized the TSP as solely dealing with terrorists abroad calling into the United States, sent out his Attorney General to lie to Congress about it, and is currently engaged in a disinformation campaign including, but not limited to, this Wall Street Journal piece and a conference call of right-wing bloggers.
Ms. Slaughter asserts that the Bush administration has abandoned its winner-take-all unilateral foreign policy at a time when the Bush administration is accusing Democrats of imperiling the nation by refusing to give the president the right to eviscerate the fourth amendment. What’s her evidence?
The Bush administration…, which has been notorious for playing to its hard-right base, has started reaching across the aisle, with its admirable immigration bill (even though it failed), with its new push for a diplomatic strategy toward North Korea and Iran, and above all with its choice of three seasoned moderates for important positions: Robert M. Gates as defense secretary, John D. Negroponte as deputy secretary of state and Robert B. Zoellick as World Bank president.
[Just as an aside here: I know that the foreign policy establishment (read: Joe Biden) considers John Negroponte a ‘seasoned moderate’. Most progressives consider him an accomplice to war crimes. Just sayin’…I don’t mean to be vituperative.]
It’s true that Gates and Negroponte are not neo-conservatives. But, in the Bush administration, this hardly translates to some kind of new moderation, and it certainly has not been accompanied by any genuine olive branch. Bush has told his own party that he isn’t going to compromise on Iraq. And the administration-sponsored psy-ops belligerence towards Iran continues unabated.
Ms. Slaughter should consider the following. President Bush is less popular than any president in the history of our country (save Nixon on the eve of his resignation) and over 50% of the nation wants him impeached and removed from office. His chief of staff has been found in contempt of congress, his former senior adviser has been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, his Attorney General is a crook who committed perjury more than once just this week. His vice-president is unhinged. The administration is asserting unprecedented powers to resist congressional oversight. And, most importantly, the administration refuses to listen to moderates even within their own party, while accusing moderates in the Democratic Party of cowardice and treason.
In these circumstances, moderation is not a virtue. A moderate response is indistinguishable from apathy.
And for Slaughter to shoot the messenger in the name of apathy is a case study in why the blogosphere reacts to bipartisanship with fury.
We are patriots that are trying to save our country. Ms. Slaughter appears to be just one more deluded member of the establishment that thinks all can be put right if we just tinker around the edges and get Bush to accept the wisdom of James Baker and Lee Hamilton.
First, Bush is not going to accept the wisdom of Baker and Hamilton. Second, their wisdom is grossly overrated and wholly inadequate to the challenges we face.
