Refreshing Honesty

In today’s New York Times, a former Bush campaign
strategist quits drinking Kool-Aid for Lent.

He said his decision to step forward had not
come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in
Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a
sense of duty to go public given his role in
helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast
Senator John Kerry as a flip-flopper who could
not be trusted with national security during
wartime, said he had even written but never
submitted an op-ed article titled “Kerry Was
Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts
Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was
correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from
Iraq.

Impressive. Maybe someday Matthew Dowd will let me
publish his essay along with my never-before-seen article
from 2003, “How the Red Sox will win the World Series.”

In the last several years, as he has gradually
broken his ties with the Bush camp, one of
Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters died, he
was divorced, and he watched his oldest son
prepare for deployment to Iraq as an Army
intelligence specialist fluent in Arabic. Mr. Dowd
said he had become so disillusioned with the war
that he had considered joining street
demonstrations against it, but that his continued
personal affection for the president had kept him
from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is
so central.

But it’s the thought that counts, right? Just like all those
right-wing warmongers who considered enlisting to fight in
Iraq, but didn’t out of continued personal affection for
attacking other people’s patriotism and protecting their own
ass.

He said that he still believed campaigns must do
what it takes to win, but that he was never
comfortable with the most hard-charging tactics.
He is now calling for “gentleness” in politics. He
said that while he tried to keep his own conduct
respectful during political combat, he wanted to
“do my part in fixing fissures that I may have
been part of.”

[...]

Mr. Dowd does not seem prepared to put his
views to work in 2008. The only candidate who
appeals to him, he said, is Senator Barack
Obama, Democrat of Illinois, because of what
Mr. Dowd called his message of unity. But, he
said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t walking
around in Africa or South America doing
something that was like mission work.”

He added, “I do feel a calling of trying to re-
establish a level of gentleness in the world.”

Have you noticed that as President Pissypants’ approval
ratings continue to fall into the abyss, more and more cynical
shitheads like this guy suddenly decide that it’s time for
everyone in Washington to break out the peace-pipe and
sing kumbayah?

Now that Iraq is officially a clusterfuck, the Constitution is in
tatters, and the Republican party is on the ropes, those of
us who have been right about this stuff for the past six
years (and attacked for it) are supposed to play nice with
these idiots?

If I may borrow a phrase once used by our current vice-
president while speaking to a colleague in the U.S. Senate...

Go fuck yourself.