Kristolizing the (Neoconservative) Moment (ERIC ALTERMAN

[laststeamtrain]

Kristolizing the (Neoconservative) Moment

Eric Alterman Mon Jan 29, 12:35 PM ET

The Nation -- Join me, dear reader, in yet another inquiry into the role in American political life of William Kristol. My goal is not merely to point out, yet again, his miserable record of prognostication relating to the invasion of Iraq. That's now a given. And in fact, while Kristol has been spectacularly wrong, he has not been the wrongest of the top two Weekly Standard editors. That honor would have to go to executive editor Fred Barnes, who, oblivious to what almost all Americans and (finally) most pundits now know, continues to portray George W. Bush as a heroic figure and successful President.

But while Barnes is a bad joke to most, his colleague Kristol continues to add to his panoply of powerful pundit positions. Not only is he EiC of The Weekly Standard, a semi-regular columnist for the Washington Post, a Fox News analyst and a frequent face on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show; he is also a regular columnist for Time. By any measure he remains, as Bernard-Henri Lévy once deemed him, America's "archetype of the neoconservative." What this means in Kristol's case is that what may look like journalism to the naked eye, and is passed along as such by his editors and producers, is really something quite different.

Make no mistake: Bill Kristol is an extremely smart fellow with good manners and a likable demeanor. Because he is so smart, it's all but impossible to believe that he believes many of the things he says and writes. But if one looks for a consistent pattern to Kristol's perpetual wrongness, it's not hard to discern. For Kristol is less interested in being correct than in advancing his side's interests. He's not a journalist; he's an apparatchik working undercover as a man of the press.

Back in 1993, when Kristol admitted to just being a Republican strategist, he made a name for himself by writing a strategy memo in which he altered the course of American politics by convincing Republicans not to compromise with the Clinton Administration healthcare plan but to destroy it. "Any Republican urge to negotiate a 'least bad' compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president 'do something,'" he wrote, "if it can be beaten, it unravels other things. We have to beat the Clinton plan period, no ifs, ands or buts."

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Why then, despite his poor record as a prognosticator and his penchant for poisonous political rhetoric, does he remain the darling of so many MSM editors and producers? Why did Time, which already suffers from a surfeit of liberal-hating McCarthyite pundits like Andrew Sullivan (who's leaving), Charles Krauthammer and Joe Klein, choose to add one with even fewer journalistic bona fides and less credibility? Is it the job only of liberals to insure the fealty of the mainstream media to their professed goals of presenting truth in a genuinely fair and balanced fashion? Or is that goal now so quaint that somehow a right-wing holy warrior can be said to fit the bill?

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[illinoisprogressive]

1. Excellent and Thanks. I keep wondering why the msm gives this guy cred

when he is not only wrong but, head of the hated and discredited neocons