Hewitt v. Sullivan

My two original blogging heroes square off. Hewitt's take here.

1. Sullivan came loaded with his two talking points, which seemed to boil down to:
*Hewitt was asking questions to which he knew the answer; and
*Hewitt supports torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, etc., so how dare Hewitt call himself a Christian.

To which one would respond:
*So what; and
*No, he doesn't, so never mind the second half of that.

Two months ago, when President Bush was, in Sullivan's words, attempting to "legalize torture," Senators McCain and Graham, with their objections, were held up by Sullivan and others as the conscience of the party, if not all of human history. A few days later, when the White House McCain worked out the language with McCain and sent forward the detention/interrogation legislation (just as the Supreme Court decision urged Bush to, just as the New York Times practically ordered Bush to, when such an eventuality was seen to help Democrats), McCain and Graham were sell-outs. Suddenly McCain, whose experience in the Hanoi Hilton had made him the supposed indisputable arbiter of all things torture was now Bush's water carrier.

The legislation polls at about 65% (with some dissenters thinking the CIA and military doesn't have enough leeway). The issue is dead, Sullivan can't stand it, and so he's going to drag "torture" and "habeas corpus" in at every opportunity like some drunk in the corner bar raving about "coloreds."

2. It was Andrew Sullivan who made me want to blog, if only for myself. His instincts were spot-on in the weeks after 9/11, when his postings became a kind of observance. And--give him this--he was first and loudest about the troubles in Iraq, when many of us (mea culpa!) took false hope from some signposts that, in retrospect, seem more cosmetic than cosmic (the taking of Fallujah, and to a certain extent the second and third round of elections). Beyond that, Sullivan has displayed a kind of petulant unseriousness. In the middle of a world war, he declared his opposition to Bush solely on the basis of Bush's opposition to gay marriage. His pre-occupation with "torture" approaches--sorry--a fetish, and overlooks the simple fact that Americans aren't stupid, and can distinguish between soul-killing nihilism for its own sake and the kind of interrogation that is one step removed from Andy Sipowicz in the station house.

3. It stands to reason, I think, that when you know a show's format, and agree to come on, it becomes your obligation to take part. Either that or don't come on. Sullivan appears to have borrowed a play from the Clinton playbook: take a perfectly reasonable question ("Are you a Christian?") as an excuse to fulminate. One cannot characterize Sullivan as a Democrat--he is the most unclassifiable pundit in America--but his Hewitt appearance is part and parcel with the Dem strategy in the home state:

*Stigmatize any right-leaning media person or body (Fox, Hewitt, Rush on Michael J. Fox);

*Scream about any GOP ad that scores a body blow (the "racist" Ford ad);

*Parade forth the most ghoulish victims possible, those supposedly immune to criticism (Yup, Michael J. Fox, come on down).

The sad thing is it may work. When, in 1995, Clinton ran rings around Newt Gingrich during the government shut-down, and effectively ended the conservative revolution before it started (all but what helped Clinton politically: welfare reform, free trade, defense of marriage, budget restraint), the GOP kept hoping and hoping that Clinton's shabby little scandals would lay him low. To which Rush Limbaugh responded: You can't beat nothing with nothing.

Now, with the nothing on the other foot, this election may prove him wrong.