JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 16, 2011
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William Kristol has an item at the Weekly Standard entitled, "J Street: Maybe 'Israel Really Ain't A Very Good Idea.'" This turns out to hinge upon the following quote from Daniel Levy:
Daniel Levy, a founder of J Street: Look, bottom line: If we’re all wrong, if we’re all wrong and a collective Jewish presence in the Middle East can only survive by the sword, it cannot be accepted, it’s not about what we do. Sound familiar? They hate us for what we are, not what we do. If that’s true, then Israel really ain’t a very good idea.
I'm not exactly a huge fan of Daniel Levy, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual. But the quote here is making the opposite of the point Kristol suggests. Levy is arguing that if his opponents' premise is true, then Israel is not a good idea. He is making that point in order to discredit his opponents' premise. This is a very common form of argumentation: if we believe A, then we must believe B, and since B is false, we shouldn't believe A. For Kristol to site such an argument as evidence the speaker believes B is... completely unsurprising, actually.
Meanwhile, the print issue of the Standard has this delightful (subscription only - it's not worth your money) tidbit:
Buried at the end of an otherwise milquetoast New York Times article (“Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East,” which The Scrapbook supposes is a generous interpretation of the fact that there’s outward clue the White House has any clue whatsoever) was this jarring nugget of reporting:
Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is criticizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
Indeed. When you’re president of China and you’re concerned that people in the hinterlands are bitterly clinging to their guns ’n’ religion, you can simply take those things away. When you’re president of China, all radio is National Public Radio. When you’re president of China, you don’t have to worry about annoying off-year elections. When you’re president of China…We could go on.
No doubt some readers are stunned that a democratically elected president would empathize with the leader of the deadliest regime in human history. (In the wake of new archival evidence unearthed last year, one prominent University of Hong Kong professor now places the death toll of Mao’s Great Leap Forward at 45 million.)
Okay. We don't have any larger context for Obama's comment. But I think it's pretty clear that he was not expressing an actual desire to preside over a dictatorship. Nor is he expressing support for the Chinese regime. He's saying the Chinese regime suppresses dissent and his government doesn't.
Let me analogize this in a way that the Standard might understand: It would be much easier to be a lazy welfare queen, pulling down fat government checks for popping out babies, but some of us have to work for a living. That statement is the opposite of empathizing with a welfare recipient. Throwing in that bit about the Great Leap Forward is an especially comic touch -- it's not enough to smear Obama as a sympathizer with a brutal Chinese government, you have to stretch the attack to tie him in with the murder of 45 million people during the 1950s.
It's getting harder to distinguish that magazine from a cheap oppo research shop.
12 comments
Billy Kristol is a boil on the backside of humanity. When I emailed an item on Kristol to my libertarian columnist friend, he wrote back that he mostly liked Irving Kristol, but he opined that Billy is a "reversion to the mean."
- liberalref
March 16, 2011 at 4:39pm
Remember how incensed the Right was when George Bush said "If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier -- just so long as I'm the dictator." Oh, wait.
- W_Bombay
March 16, 2011 at 6:01pm
So Dr. Bombay, how about boogieing on over? My wife confects a fabulous roast beef dinner, if such a meal is to your liking, we would partake of it, chased by, say, a snifter of brandy, mixed in with sparkling conversation.
- liberalref
March 16, 2011 at 6:07pm
Right, I was going to bring up the Bush quote too: http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/10/29_Dictator.html To be fair, Bush did get some (unfair) shit about the quote from liberals at the time.
- ulexamp
March 16, 2011 at 6:38pm
I feel you kind of miss the point on Obama's words too. “No one is criticizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square” strikes me not at all as being about internal dissent. It's about the difficulties of being simultaneously the "leader of the free world" and the leader of the world's superpower. No one is criticizing Hu because no one expects Hu to lead for human rights or act in anything but narrow self interest, AND no one's criticizing Hu because no one expects Hu to lead, period. No matter how big the crisis, the American President is expected both by the world and by the twitter-speed Washington press corps to be all over it, all the time, immediately. People and the press and punditry expect the President to comment and control every event as it happens. Remember all the exasperation that the President couldn't just immediately fix the Gulf last year, or snap his fingers and get Mubarak or Qadaffi to go? I'm sure we'll see speculation next that Obama isn't doing enough about Japan, even though it's entirely in the hands of another sovereign democratic 1st world nation. The ADD press corps (and, to be fair, voters) are what he's complaining about, not the Chinese ability to quash dissent.
- Crock1701
March 16, 2011 at 7:34pm
Apparently many conservatives are Logically Challenged these days. If you're not 100% for us you'r against us. Pointing out a weakness in China means you're for that weakness. "If that's true" means you're saying that IS true. It makes reasoned arguments and seeking compromise very difficult. Because no matter WHAT you SAY, they hear what they want to hear, which justifies what they want to do. "Reality is what we say it is". Which is why the Republican dogma is so resistant to change, no matter how many disasters it triggers.
- AllanL5
March 17, 2011 at 9:29am
ulexamp - Why was the shit Bush got for saying that unfair? It actually was a statement of his beliefs, not a joke, exaggeration, or statement taken out of context. He actually did say, contrary to the entire point of Democracy, that being President meant he didn't have to explain himself to anyone. Just in case anyone thought he was kidding, his administration's lawyers argued for eight solid years that the Presidency need never disclose any information whatsoever and isn't subject to legal restrictions of any kind, no matter what anyone's silly "laws" say.
- janus
March 17, 2011 at 9:40am
Your amazing, Mr. Chait. Perfect summation of that crack news magazine responsible for out little Iraq adventure.
- RedState
March 17, 2011 at 10:03am
"It's getting harder to distinguish that magazine from a cheap oppo research shop." ...because its ambition was never to be cheap about it?
- bayardgb
March 17, 2011 at 10:08am
"Cheap oppo research shop?" I believe you're too kind. The word "research" is far too elevated for what they do.
- cspencef
March 17, 2011 at 10:36am
Every week or so, security specialists sweep the Weekly Standard's offices to assure that there are no mirrors on the premises. Despite the fact that staffers undergo rigorous training to cleanse them of any trace of shame, with frequent refresher seminars, occasionally someone will accidentally see his or her visage reflected back in a contraband mirror and recoil in horror. The magazine then has to do without the staffer's services while he/she undergoes intensive re-education at an off-site boot camp. (Note that the boot camp is not always successful - Kristol has spent thousands of hours there and no one has successfully removed his smirk, despite the fact that it betrays the insincerity of everything he says, including "and" and "the".)
- Geoff G
March 17, 2011 at 10:54am
Even Chait understands the truth about welfare queens. He even wants to be one.
- harasan
March 17, 2011 at 5:24pm