In a Blue State of Mind

The headline of E.J. Dionne's March 15 Washington Post column, "What Kind of Hater Are You?" was in all likelihood composed by a flunky in the daily's newsroom, but there's no doubt that Dionne, one of the affluent, clubby liberal journalists/television analysts who form an elite Beltway fraternity, is clear about the Americans he hates.

Dionne, whose vanity in projecting the image of a gentleman is in stark contrast to his more honest Democratic colleagues, would never actually commit to print the word "hate" in describing President Bush, Republicans or conservatives-the latter two are synonymous in his narrow-minded view-but you can imagine the vitriol he lets loose in private conversation.

In that column, Dionne gloms on to a "hot political science paper" written by four academics (from Columbia, Dartmouth, University of Chicago and Washington University), which argues that rich citizens in "blue" states are more politically aligned with their less economically fortunate fellow residents than in "red" states. He comes up with this remarkable conclusion: "Yes, Bush carried a lot of poor states-but with heavy support from the rich people who lived in them. The class war in being waged more fiercely in the Republican states than in the Democratic states."

I guess that means New York is a "Democratic" state, even though it's had a Republican governor for almost 12 years, and, stunningly, John Kerry didn't win 100 percent of the vote there in 2004. (Are the nearly three million Bush voters from the last election therefore fake New Yorkers?)

He continues: "[Columbia's Andrew] Gelman and his colleagues help us understand why southern Democrats such as Bill Clinton and John Edwards may be more attuned to the power of populism than Northern Democrats such as John Kerry-and, perhaps, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Their paper also explains why Southern Republicans such as President Bush pursue policies that are hugely beneficial to their wealthy base even as they try to diminish the political impact to class warfare by shifting the argument to other subjects: religion, values or national security."

I hadn't noticed Edwards' national electoral success-that "populism" sure worked against Kerry in the primaries-but I do remember that Ronald Reagan, who continues to be venerated by the wealthy, religious and national security hawks, hailed from that famous "Southern" state, California.

As the midterm elections draw closer, it's possible Dionne will ramp up his rhetoric, there aping the hatred brandished in print by allies such as Harper's Lewis Lapham, The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg and Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter-I'm sticking to the mainstream here-if his March 24 column is any indication. In that gem, Dionne opened up by wondering if Bush was "the leader of our government" or "just a right-wing talk-show host," a euphemism these days for "dumb motherfucker." Dionne went on and on about Bush and the after-effects of Katrina, giving examples of the President's failings to lionize Jon Corzine, the recently elected governor of New Jersey.

The former senator is a hero in Dionne's mind because last week he "announced that his state's fiscal situation was a mess, and he proposed a budget that simultaneously raised taxes, cut programs and walked away from some of his own campaign promises."

What a political stud that Corzine is! Dionne doesn't see fit to note that Jersey's shortfall came on the watch of the disgraced former Democratic governor James McGreevey, and apparently doesn't seem to think it's a betrayal of voters to "walk away" from the "promises" he made just last November.

On March 21, Dionne lamented the retirement of Rockefeller Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a New York "moderate" who was typical of the Northeast GOP House members before Newt Gingrich led his party to power 12 years ago. "I'll miss Boehlert," Dionne writes, "and his optimistic moderation. Our politics worked better when a sufficiently large brand of Republican moderates and liberals could take the edge off polarization and orient government toward problem solving. But the liberal Republicans are gone. We have to deal with the GOP we have, not the GOP we wish still existed."

Typically, Dionne has a condescending view of his shrinking readership. Obviously, the Post and New York Times vet preferred the makeup of Congress when it was run by virtuous, non-polarizing Democrats, men like Ted Kennedy whose smear on Robert Bork was topped only by his sense of responsibility at Chappaquiddick in 1969. Add to the Massachusetts senator Democrats like Chuck Schumer (the born-again xenophobic of Dubai Ports infamy), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (who's taken the "moderate" stance that Bush is the country's worst president in history and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is an intellectual imbecile) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, another leader who prefers "problem-solving" to partisanship.

It fell to, of all people, The Nation's editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, in a March 26 Washington Post op-ed, to demonstrate that demagoguery and absurd historical analogies aren't confined to either party. She correctly slammed the obnoxious conservative Grover Norquist for equating the appalling estate tax with the "morality of the Holocaust." Tongue-tied GOP Sen. Rick Santorum was excoriated for comparing the Senate procedural tactic of the "nuclear option" to a tactic worthy of Hitler.

But vanden Heuvel also recalls Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin equating Guantanamo "abuse" to that of the Nazis, "Soviets in their gulags" and Pol Pot. West Virginia's ancient Robert Byrd, venerated by Democrats in his dotage, also invoked Hitler when discussing the "nuclear option."

The Nation's leading talk-show celebrity, while in such a charitable mood, could've included The New York Times' editorial writers in her hall of shame. Examples abound, of course, but I was particularly amused by this March 25 outright lie, a lead sentence to a defense of the morning-after birth control pill. The writer-one assumes with a straight face, since humor isn't an option at the Times-said: "We don't generally approve of holding nominations hostage to other political objectives."

Come again? This is the newspaper that fully endorsed the "hostage-taking" of Bush appellate court judicial nominees like William Pryor, Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen (later confirmed in the "Gang of 14" compromise), while vociferously insisting that the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito heralded a new dark age in the United States.

E.J. Dionne probably has a cordial relationship with the Times' resident sociologist David Brooks (a columnist that Boehlert probably approved of as well), the often wishy-washy pundit who is given varying degrees of respect from Democrats.

I often agree with Brooks' opinions, even if his writing style is ponderous and too eager to please, but his March 26 essay was hyperbolic in its own right.

Brooks advised the gaggle of 2008 presidential aspirants to, for a moment at least, put aside fund-raising and sucking up to the media, and study Abraham Lincoln's conduct during the Civil War. The 16th president's political and moral evolution more than 140 years ago is well known-at least by those Americans who attended history classes before 1985-but Brooks does readers no service at all by comparing the America of the 1860s to that of the 21st century.

Yes, he does allow that the Civil War "was of course bloodier and more dismal than anything we're facing today," yet insists any '08 contender will have to face the problem of inspiring a "war-weary nation." It's undoubtedly true that Americans are tired of the conflict in Iraq (especially those families who have relatives in the military).

One side is hoping for Bush's success in promoting democracy there and elsewhere in the Mideast. The other side keeps looking forward to their "imperialist" country's disgrace. But as the tepid anti-war demonstrations less than two weeks ago proved, this isn't an issue as predominant as the media portrays it.

That was evident last weekend when 500,000 people, by police count, marched in Los Angeles to protest the anti-immigration legislation currently on debate in an increasingly Nativist Congress.

Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, the de facto leader of the "build the wall movement," said in Denver last week that illegal immigrants-without whom the economy of California, at the least, would collapse-are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation."

Chances are that a tardy media will stop publishing "color" stories about "ordinary" citizens who are now against the Iraq war, and jostle for space on the immigration juggernaut. This will be fascinating, since Democrats and Republicans (depending on their states) are scattered on what will prove to be the most contentious issue this fall.

What side will pundits align themselves with? After all, Kennedy and John McCain are fighting for reasonable (although not far-reaching enough) immigration reform, as is Bush.

The conflict of loyalties is bound to drive some writers to drink stronger than Evian, although the Times' Paul Krugman, in his March 27 column, has already dipped his toe in Tancredo's muddy waters. Krugman claims he's "instinctive, emotionally pro-immigration," but he's all for tabling any effort at reform, probably because Bush is for it. The President's ideas about immigration, notable since 1994 when he bucked California's Pete Wilson on sending the illegals back home, are, as Krugman misleadingly claims, "clearly designed by and for corporate interests."

One can be grateful for Frank Rich's "book leave," but I can't wait to see how he lines up on this one.