After This Baer I Need a Scotch

I don’t think it can be said with any certainty who best represents the intellectual bankruptcy of “liberal hawks,” but Kenneth Baer tempts one to declare the competition over. The most recent source of Baer’s sniggering is the Democrats who had the temerity to hold hearings about the Downing Street Memo:

First, there’s the obsession with hypocrisy. Truthfulness and integrity are critical in public life. The Bush Administration on a number of fronts has demonstrated a reckless disregard for both. But proving that the Bushies didn?t do what they said or were political with intelligence or, in general, are just a bunch of meanies does not a foreign policy vision make. Yet, the focus of this special hearing was just that: the truthfulness of the Bush Administration. When Bush talks about spreading democracy around the world or the innately human quest for freedom, what do Democrats have to say to that? What is our vision?

In November, the American people decided that despite the slipperiness of the Bush Administration’s case for war in Iraq, they still want them to lead. And last time I checked the Constitution, Bush can?t run again. Taking that into account, it would be more constructive if the Democrats held more hearings into the emerging threats facing the United States and devoted more time thinking about what the progressive vision of America’s role in the world should be than impugning the honor of the Bushies.

First of all, it’s obvious that the whole premise of Baer’s argument is idiotic. Critiquing another’s foreign policy is hardly inconsistent with developing one’s own policies. Moreover, this claim is particularly hilarious coming from somebody whose discourse consists almost entirely of attacking dirty, dirty liberals (remember when, during his TPM gig, he compared all Democrats to the left of Joe Lieberman to the left of the British Labor Party in 1982?) The dirty secret about “liberal hawks” is that they have nothing to say about foreign policy, apart from the claim that “serious” Democrats are obliged to support all of the Bush administration’s foreign policy initiatives based on an ever-changing series of ad hoc rationalizations, while ignoring how the fact that our army is tied down in Iraqi quicksand might affect out ability to deal with actual security threats. And, worst of all, there’s his contention that evidence that the Bush administration lied to the public prior to a war that has killed 1,700 Americans and countless others with no end in sight amounts to nothing more than calling the GOP “meanies.” And, Bush can’t run again, so what business is it of the opposition party to look into gross derelictions of state power? In an L, G & M exclusive, I have acquired a memo Kenneth Baer wrote in 1973:

Why are liberal Democrats in Congress concerned with proving that the Nixon Administration is a bunch of poopy-heads? As I read the Constitution, Nixon can’t run again. What difference does it make what they did? The Democrats need to stop their mindless obstructionism and start developing their own positive policies on illegal wiretapping, robbing offices to find private information, and using the power of the state to intimidate political opponents. The Democrats are proving they don’t know how to govern. Hopefully they will start by launching a series of demagogic attacks on the ultra-liberal college newspaper editors who control the Democratic Party.

I know you won’t believe this, but the argument gets worse:

Second, there’s the conspiratorial, and — at times, anti-Semitic — delusions that are cropping up among the left.

Ah yes, our old friend “the left.” Needless to say, Baer seems to be using the Glenn Reynolds definition–in this case, “the left” seems to consist of “some activists handing out flyers” and “some guy you never heard of who got cut off after 2 minutes.” And in a particularly neat trick, “the left” also now seems to include James Moran, not only an anti-Semite but one of the most reactionary Democrats in Congress. (And he discussed “the left” without even interviewing it!) But, then, this is pretty much the political acumen would one expect from someone who believes that Congressional hearings are a good vehicle for developing positive foreign policy, and that the opposition party in Congress has no business engaging in governmental oversight.

I have the utmost respect for Josh Marshall, but Jeebus, where did he find this guy? Wait–I have the answer:

During the 2004 election, he was a senior advisor to the Lieberman for President campaign…

Yep, that’s somebody I want to get my political advice from. Hopefully, he’ll sign on with Biden in 2008, maybe Zell Miller in 2012–if he plays his cards right, maybe he can be the right-wing Bob Shrum!