WHAT RAINES BELIEVES:
Fascinating little column by Howell Raines. Reading it is a very useful insight into how he turned the New York Times into a crusading left-populist pamphlet. Take Iraq. Of course Raines opposed the war. The notion that he might have supported it under any circumstance while Republicans were in power is ludicrous. No doubt he takes the New York Review line that we should get out now. But then he's criticizing the Bush administration for a "cut-and-run" strategy: <font size=2>
White House strategists are betting that leaving Iraq in 30 days - no matter what chaos ensues in that country - will leave them time to revise history between now and election day and, more importantly, get on with the work of destroying Kerry's image.<font size=4>
Let's look at that quote again: "... leaving Iraq in 30 days ..." The question is: does Raines believe this? If he does, he believes keeping up to 140,000 troops in a foreign country is the same as "leaving" it. Now imagine that the Bush administration decided not to transfer sovereignty and remain in control of Iraq for another year. Do you think Raines would support them? The truth is: Raines would oppose any policy in Iraq as long as it was pursued by the Bush administration. And that was indeed the rule during his editorship: the Bush administration was wrong and evil, whatever it did. Now get a load of Raines' loathing of the American market economy as a whole:<font size=2>
As Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council noted, Americans aren't antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves. It's a mass delusion, of course, but one that has worked ever since Ronald Reagan got Republicans to start flaunting their wealth instead of apologising for it. Kerry has to understand that when a cure is impossible, the doctor must enter the world of the deluded.
What does this mean in terms of campaign message? It means that he must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans - ie greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favour.<font size=4>
The only reason people vote Republican is greed and a desire to screw other people over? Has this guy got through his sophomore year yet? And the notion that people can actually make it big in this country is "a mass delusion, of course." I love that: "of course." All Guardian readers, from that wonderfully socially mobile country, Britain, know that only socialism allows people to better themselves, as long as that socialism is managed by enlightened souls like Raines. Then we have this:
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As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, "I am not a redistributionist Democrat." That's actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat.<font size=4>
So the aim is to deceive voters about what you want to do. This might be amusing coming from a Dick Morris or a Karl Rove. But didn't Raines spend a year and a half lacerating the Bush administration for, er, lying? And now he thinks it's an essential tool for governance? Not all Bush-haters are as dumb or as crude as Raines. But it's useful to see how decadent the left-liberal mind can be in one of its more prominent exemplars. The American people are stupid, craven greed-hounds; lying is good if you can get away with it; American capitalism is a rotten, hollow promise; and even the Democrats refuse to take the advice of the few enlightened people who can help them, like Howell Raines. Well, that makes one thing to be grateful about.
ONE OTHER POINT: Can you imagine being a conservative of any kind and having to work for someone who could write a column like that one? Raines' sheer contempt for opposing views is gob-smacking. And can you imagine anyone writing a column like that deciding to edit the New York Times as objectively as possible? They key to Raines is the method he endorses in this column: "disinformation." That was his modus operandi for a year and a half: to hijack a newspaper and turn it into a means of disinformation. His only regret is that he didn't get away with it for much longer.<font size=3>
andrewsullivan.com |
