People Too Dumb to Blog, Episode MXVQRRZVIIIII: Generation Why
O.k., two links via Insty in a row is sure to cause...well, a row...around here. But I couldn't pass this one up.
For two points...no, that's too much for this one. For 0.5 points, spot the chicanery in GW's bogus--though, to be accurate, merely implicit--charge of inconsistency against Jimmy Carter.
For ten extra-special bonus points, explain why wingnuts continue to be obsessed with Carter 25 years after the end of his presidency.
Perhaps it was because Carter foolishly urged us to promote democracy and human rights around the world and urged us to achieve energy independence so that we could disentangle ourselves from the political disaster that is the Middle Ea....um...no, that doesn't really make any sense, does it?
[P.s. Do you realize how dumb one has to be to be too dumb to blog???
p.p.s. It's really bad to ramp up the level of nastiness on the web by calling people dumb. I'm very much against it, and try to do it as little as possible. You are advised to admonish me for it. Sometimes I just can't resist.]
O.k., two links via Insty in a row is sure to cause...well, a row...around here. But I couldn't pass this one up.
For two points...no, that's too much for this one. For 0.5 points, spot the chicanery in GW's bogus--though, to be accurate, merely implicit--charge of inconsistency against Jimmy Carter.
For ten extra-special bonus points, explain why wingnuts continue to be obsessed with Carter 25 years after the end of his presidency.
Perhaps it was because Carter foolishly urged us to promote democracy and human rights around the world and urged us to achieve energy independence so that we could disentangle ourselves from the political disaster that is the Middle Ea....um...no, that doesn't really make any sense, does it?
[P.s. Do you realize how dumb one has to be to be too dumb to blog???
p.p.s. It's really bad to ramp up the level of nastiness on the web by calling people dumb. I'm very much against it, and try to do it as little as possible. You are advised to admonish me for it. Sometimes I just can't resist.]
posted by Winston Smith at
10:44 AM
17 Comments:
"For ten extra-special bonus points, explain why wingnuts continue to be obsessed with Carter 25 years after the end of his presidency."
Actually, it's Carter that's injecting himself into the national debate, not conservatives. Sure he's been out of office for 25 years (thank God!) he still feels the need to blather on incoherently about foreign policy... something his Presidency proved he doesn't know shit about.
As witnessed by the fact that he urged us to achieve energy independence so that we could disentangle ourselves from the political disaster that is the Middle Ea....um...no, that doesn't really make any sense, does it?
Also: Carter speaking up and the conservatives obsessing about him are two different things.
Try to keep up, Sparky.
"Also: Carter speaking up and the conservatives obsessing about him are two different things."
Simply responding to his public remarks is not obsessing. Though you seem to be a bit obsessive over the whole thing.
Responding to the public statement of a former president by calling him a traitor working against america's interests must qualify as obsessive, or at least fucking nuts.
"Simply responding to his public remarks is not obsessing. Though you seem to be a bit obsessive over the whole thing."
Er...which is it?
Carter, and to a lesser extent Clinton, although I suspect he's not hit his stride yet, are the first ex-presidents to stand on the world stage and disagree with US foreign policy. (To my knowledge.)
That is by definition remarkable, as in worthy of remark.
Does it matter that the situation is extraordinary? Does it matter that they're right? I mean, the volutary gag rule seems like a decent idea to me, but there comes a point when they'd have an *obligation* to speak up. Even Poppy Bush has let it known that he's not happy.
TvD, I typed "'george h w bush' clinton foreign policy criticism" into the Google plugin and this was the fourth hit.
"Where I find most fault in the Clinton foreign policy, the area where I find room for criticism, is this pattern of start-and-stop, start-and-stop."
Surely you can do better than that, Mr. Weiner. It does not undermine any Clinton policy, nor does it take it overseas.
BTW, I heard Carter biographer Doug Brinkley say last night that Carter wrote a letter to the UN asking it to vote against Bush 41's Gulf War.
Now that would be undermining.
I'm inclined to agree with Tom on this one at first glance...a pretty weak criticism. Though technically it IS a criticism... Dunno what to say about that really. What's the alleged rule? No criticism at all allowed? Or no substantial criticism?
I think the rule has no merit whatsoever, but I'd like to see it well-defined. From what I can see, by "Take it overseas" and "world stage" you mean to say that it makes a difference if the ex-President is standing inside the U.S. when he makes the criticism. I don't think this is material; people in other countries can generally find out when an ex-president says something in a public forum in the U.S.
If you read the whole quote, H.W. was there saying that Clinton had "weaken[ed] the image of the United States as a strong, resolute leader. It was devastating, sent a horrible signal, when that troop ship was turned back -- a signal not just to Latin America, but to Europe and elsewhere." "Devastating" is what I'd call strong criticism, or disagreement, if you will.
In one of the other speeches quoted in the link, H.W. specifically criticized Clinton for, he claimed, sending troops into harm's way without knowing what the mission was, "how they're going to do it, and how they're going to get out of there." Isn't that a specific criticism of a Clinton policy?
As I said, I don't think the rule has any merit. But if it's to be applied fairly, I need to know what it is. And an ex-president's public remarks are by definition on the world stage.
OK, this seems to establish that Carter has been up to stuff that's well beyond anything H.W. or Clinton did. So I'll say that you can definitely craft a version of the rule that might be reasonable and that would catch Carter and not H.W. That is probably enough to explain the right's continuing dislike for Carter.
If you want to keep score--my dissertation says you should--we lose the bonus points, but I think Tom was still wrong to suggest that Carter and Clinton were unique as ex-presidents in disagreeing with U.S. foreign policy. Of course we can still earn the 0.5 points for explaining Generation Why's chicanery.
Well, thanks, Mr. Weiner, on the Carter thing. He's a queer duck.
I used the weasel words "to my knowledge," and further qualified it by extending it to "the world stage," as in influencing foreigners instead of influencing the US public debate.
I do know that after Teddy Roosevelt's son was killed in WWI, he freaked out, and started bigtime on Woodrow Wilson. TR was gonna run yet again vs. WW in 1920, but dropped dead before the primary season.
Then again, TR was wack.
Ex-presidents dummying up is a tradition, but a good one, I think. They're no longer in full possession of the knowledge a president has, but their opinions are given far greater (and disproportionate) weight than that of another private citizen.
As a principle, I dunno. Surely we cannot slavishly observe rules, especially unwritten ones, when we see a great evil. But wisdom and prudence are called for about what the breaking point is.
Obviously Carter overstepped in Gulf War I, which was no disaster, and had Bush41 actively opposed Clinton over Bosnia, where the stakes were relatively small, then that would have been pique, and not wisdom.
You lost the election, dude.
But if there's anything at all to "partisanship ends at the water's edge," then it should apply first and foremost to ex-presidents.
Hey, extra special gold-star bonus points to Matt and Tom for playing so nice and making some progess on this question!
I'd agree: it's a good but vague rule (as many good rules) are. Gulf War Episode I was w/in moral specs, so no trash-talking there was appropriate.
I think that the chicanery associated with the run up to GWII WAS bad enough to merit comment, but, as we know, that's a controversal point.
Would it be a cheat to say that it's o.k. to criticize the *case* for war, b/c that's a primarily domestic matter? I'm tempted by that, but it smells like a cheat to me.
But I don't buy this as the reason for the right's hatred. They've hated Carter for a long, long time. I think it started when he gave the Panama Canal back to its actual owners, the Panamanians...
By that standard, the US owns the UN building. Let's take it back, and turn it into something useful, like a parking lot.
Which doesn't mean that the Panamanians didn't own the canal...
No, we did. If the Japanese come and turn Louisiana swampland into something useful like a fish farm, the US doesn't "own" it. Besides, it creates wealth and jobs, and it doesn't really matter who owns it.
It's such justification for nationalization that helps keep the Third World backward, because it would be stupid for individuals in the First World to invest heavily in it.
As for Carter, handing over our canal to the Panamanian dictator in order to improve relations with Latin America was, um, let's leave it at ineffective.
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