Three days away from the blog means so little in the scheme of things that I’m betting you didn’t notice. Anyway, Paul Krugman’s column caught my attention this morning. Headlined “The Conservative Epiphany,” it talks about “conservative commentators who have finally realized that [the Bullshitter-in-Chief‘s] administration isn’t trustworthy.” But, it adds,
we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says that there’s something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by [the Bullshitter-in-Chief’s] deceptions, even though the administration’s mendacity was obvious from the beginning.
My ears perks up at the word “mendacity.”
Need I say it reminded me of TED SORENSEN’S ITALICS? (“I have lived a long time,” he said, “and I have seen a lot of administrations. But I have never seen an administration as incompetent — and as mendacious — as this one.”)
Since Krugman’s column is unavailable to the unwashed unsubscribed, I thought I’d mention the salient passages. According to the conventional wisdom,
if you’re a former [Bullshitter-in-Chief] supporter who now says, as [Bruce] Bartlett did at the Cato [Institute], that “the administration lies about budget numbers,” you’re a brave truth-teller. But if you’ve been saying that since the early days of the [Bullshitter’s] administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.
Similarly, if you’re a former worshipful admirer of [the Bullshitter] who now says, as [Andrew] Sullivan did at Cato, that “the people in this administration have no principles,” you’re taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when [the Bullshitter] had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.
And if you’re a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you’re to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.
The truth is that everything the new wave of [the Bullshitter’s] critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts.
Amen to that, not for the first time, a’course, as subsequently amended.
