Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Rudy Reax   [Jonah Goldberg]

This is a common, though hardly unanimous, reaction to the Rudy-ISG story. From a reader:

Hey Jonah,

So Rudy quit a panel that, in the end, advocated a complete surrender in Iraq and for us to get on our knees to Iran? 

This is bad why?  His mistake was not to quit. His mistake was not to fail to attend meetings.  His mistake was to ever have his name attached to this joke of a commission in the first place.

I love your writing and you really seem to know what is going on around that town so I have a question that no one I know can answer….

Who the f**k died and made Lee Hamilton King Solomon?  You can’t get two people in that town together to talk about what flavor ice cream to serve in a school cafeteria without Lee Hamilton chairing the ice cream committee.   I mean seriously.   Are Hamilton, Baker and Gergen the 3 Wise Men all of a sudden?

Anyway, thanks for the great work.

Me: Whatever their shortcomings, I think Hamilton and Baker are different creatures than Gergen.  They're respected hard-headed types within their respective parties. Yeah, they like cutting deals and all that, but  I think they're pretty serious guys, warts and all. Gergen — David Broder without the smoldering sexuality — honestly believes that if Democrats say 10 and Republicans say 0 then, according to some immutable law of the universe, the right and wise answer must be 5. 

06/19 01:40 PMShare