The Danger of One Dimension

Some times it's best to temper your outrage. Sometimes it's best to give someone you loathe and see no good use for, the smallest benefit of the doubt. Maureen Dowd manages to celebrate Obama's view that there are many sides to issues ("Obama is delighted by doubt.") and skewer President Bush for casting things as good vs. evil only to land in the muck herself with this statement:

“You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made,” he [President George W. Bush] said Thursday night. “But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.”

Actually, no. His decisions have been, for the most part, disastrous. If he’d paid as much attention to facts as fitness, 9/11, Iraq, the drowning of New Orleans, the deterioration in Afghanistan and the financial deregulation orgy could have been prevented.

She gives him some decisions that weren't "disastrous" and then says that a list of things could have been prevented by, we assume, a less completely stupid (or evil?) president. Ergo, if Al Gore had been president, there would have been no 9/11 and no sub-prime loans? That she could use 'could' (not 'might' and maybe could is not as strong as 'would' but still) and prevent and 9/11 in a sentence is a strong statement indeed. Lucky for the pundits that people are willing to give Obama a long honeymoon period (as polls are showing).

This is what makes people discount the opinions of most of the pundits in Op-Ed land. Even if we blame George Bush for everything for the next eight years, this will not get us to a point of looking at the nuanced and scary world where lots of people don't think like we do. It will not get us to the point where we realize our own (well, not me personally, but still) blame in the mortgage and credit crisis. Blaming one man, even the president, for the acts of rogues is a dangerous game. I don't recall anyone upbraiding Bill Clinton for the attack of African embassies in 1998. (Although I'm sure if I searched I could find some right wing 'thinker' who did!) There was some dust up about Clinton's response, though. Seems we bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in the Sudan and claimed they were making chemical weapons. What did seem to be a fact was that the plant made a lot of the drugs for people and animals in Sudan. What is not as clear is that it made chemical weapons. And none of this fact-based (really?) and measured response by the Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton "prevented 9/11." Bush had been in office less than nine months on 9/11!

Maureen, I'm sure the former President of the Harvard Law Review does "delight in doubt" and that he will not take to heart this black and white blame game against George Bush.

When you write to sway our opinions (as opposed to connect with those who agree with you one hundred per cent), you should be careful with sweeping statements. I'll only be reading you in the future, Maureen, for more fodder for the JUC.