Via Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Glenn Greenwald has his knickers in a twist. The reason? The chattering classes are calling Russ Feingold's call for censure of President Bush for "lying" about when he was going to replace Donald Rumsfeld politically motivated and ridiculous.
In his typical turgid style, Greenwald writes:
Despite all of that, when Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.
That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.
I found this viewpoint interesting, since most of the time our liberal friends are warning us against people who believe too much. Whether the issue is partial-birth abortion, the war in Iraq, Terri Schiavo, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, parental consent laws, FCC rules, or evolution vs. creationism, I usually hear that believers are just blind and not objective enough. But Greenwald goes on (and on and on):
Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.
I just found his whole train of thought--that moral relativity was a terrible blight--to be, well, hypocritical. Why is moral relativism wrong under these circumstances but not, say, when dealing with the various sins of the Clinton administration? Is it as simple as Democrat wrongdoing versus Republican wrongdoing? More Greenwald:
For that reason, when Feingold announced his censure resolution, the merits of it were virtually ignored (i.e., should something actually be done about the President's deliberate lawbreaking? What are the consequences for our country for doing nothing?). Instead, Feingold's announcement was immediately cast as a disingenuous political maneuver and discussed only in cynical terms of how it would politically harm the Democrats.
Perhaps Greenwald has spent too much time out of the country and doesn't remember the numerous scandals of the Clinton administration which were largely written off by Democrat pointmakers as political haymaking. It really is hard to whine that lying by a President isn't being taken seriously when your own President lied repeatedly about a whole mess of issues and was then supported so strongly by members of his party.
It seems to me that Greenwald should spend more of his time re-examining the behavior of Democrats in power before being shocked--shocked!--at their behavior now.
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