Why I pick on Ed Brayton

The main reason is that Atrios or Kos are beyond the reach of reason. Yes, I know Brayton claims not to be a Kerry supporter, but so did Andrew Sullivan.

I am truly bewildered by the vitriol against Bush in this campaign. Bush is not a great president, and I disagree with almost everything in his domestic policy. But to say that he is “he single worst president of [Brayton’s] lifetime” is absurd, especially when you consider how old Mr. Brayton is. I mean, Andrew Jackson, come on! And Bill Clinton was far more corrupt than George Bush. You talk about a leader who destroyed anyone standing in his way! Clinton would even destroy friends if they turned out to be useless to him. Mr. Brayton’s hostility to Bush is just unwarranted by the facts—and his newest tirade shows just how emotionally driven it is. This knee-jerk hatred for Bush has led Brayton time and time again into unjustified condemnations of the Bush administration. Take his falling for the CBS faked memo scandal. Those memos were obviously fakes to anyone who did not very much want them to be real. Yet Brayton clung to them as long as any conceivable argument could be made for them. Or take his condemnations of Cheney’s claim that terrorism would be more common if Kerry won the election. Turns out Cheney said no such thing. But Brayton latched on to it and pounded his virtual podium for days about it without bothering to even read the statement in context. Now he has declared that the Administration is responsible for these missing weapons even though “[i]t appears increasingly likely that it went missing not only before the 101st Airborne arrived on April 10, but also before the 3rd ID showed up on April 3.” Now, maybe these explosives really were stolen after American occupation. I don’t know. Nobody knows. But the fact that Brayton latches on to this as conclusive evidence of Bush’s inherent failure as commander in chief is not dispassionate analysis, to say the least.

Now, that’s fine, of course. Atrios and Kos and Instapundit and I and everyone else are engaged in passionate biased analysis—nothing wrong with that. I’m just interested in Brayton’s mindset, because he seems like a pretty fair guy, and yet everything Bush does is wrong—no, not wrong, but colossally wrong. Wrong beyond the bounds of American history. The most wrong that has ever been.

Less coy than Brayton is Jason Kuznicki, who I think showed too much of his hand when he said “once Bush is safely out of office—and Kerry is safely in office—you’ll see me attack him with all due savagery. But not a moment before.” That’s a remarkable statement. It’s okay to hand the keys to John Kerry without skepticism; only once he’s in office for a good solid four years will we turn our eye on him!

Skilful bias seems to come from selective skepticism. The problem isn’t that these people hate Bush—although their emotionalism on the subject routinely leads them to make embarrassing overstatements. Still, that hostility can be publicly useful: they make the administration walk the line more than they would if there were no oversight. But then they don’t apply the same standards to Kerry. And in a time of war, that is extremely dangerous.

I’ll blog more about Bush when I get more time.

Update: Pathetic Earthlings on similar blindspots in others.

Update 2: The ground under Ed Brayton’s prejudices continues to erode.

Update 3: And more.