The Yglesias Factor

Matthew Yglesias points out a couple of memes that have been bugging me lately. Both have to do with Al Gore, but they also point up certain ways of thinking about the left that are a tad annoying. First Matt notes the insistence by some on interpreting everything any "big name" on the left ever does in the light of some "superstrategy" for future elections: "Let's get Dean nominated, that way he'll lose and we're perfectly set up for Gore versus Hillary Clinton!" Matt rightly points out that such thinking is always ludicrous. Was anybody on the right saying, in 1995, "Hey, let's make sure we nominate Dole so that when he loses the path is clear for George W. Bush!" No.

Political predicting is, to crib a phrase from our former Vice President, a "risky scheme". I remember that in 1989 I read a George Will column in which Will floated the idea that the Democrats were in such a calamitous state of disarray that a real chance existed that they would have no other recourse but to re-nominate Michael Dukakis in 1992. Not even close, right? Talking about what you think should happen is good. Predicting what will happen guarantees nothing but error.

The other thing Matthew points out is the idea that, by endorsing Dean, Gore has revealed his entire history of hawkishness up until Iraq right now to be "a fraud". The source Matthew quotes, some guy who writes for "The Corner", seems to genuinely believe that because Al Gore took an openly anti-Iraq war stance, he therefore has never once truly believed in any military action that he either vocally supported (Afghanistan) when out of office or actually voted for when he was in Congress. First of all, I find it a bit odd to hear theories like this expressed in regard to people on the left but man, watch who catches hell if anyone on the left suggests that maybe the motives of the pro-war folks aren't entirely on the up-and-up. But that's not even the main thing that bothers me; it's this notion that "All wars are equal" and that support for the Gulf War in 1991 should naturally translate to support for the Iraq war in 2003, as if the two situations are in any comparable other than geography and the names of the key players. It's this simplistic reduction of very complex issues to base dichotomies that bugs me.