Why Larison Should Have Douthat's Job, Part 2,349

by Eric Martin

While I said at the time that Douthat represented an improvement over his predecessor at the New York Times (William Kristol), as well as some contemporaries (Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg), and was better than some of the other names in circulation at the time (David Frum), the fact remains that Daniel Larison would have been the far better choice given the Times' obvious prioritizing of right/left "balance" on its editorial page.  There are few conservative voices as devoid of partisanship, as lacking in tendentious impulses and as fair in his criticisms (of each side of the aisle) as Larison.  His take on Obama's recent world tour is refreshingly honest, in both its defense and critique: 

Alex Massie gets at the heart of what has been bothering me about so much of this Republican yapping about Obama’s so-called “apology tour” and the idea that Obama has been demeaning and denigrating the United States during his first trip abroad as President. It’s not just that these claims are false, which they clearly are, but that they have absolutely no connection to reality: there were no apologies, and there was no denigration. One might think that this would satisfy his Republican critics, but that is not the case.

Reading some of the complaints, such as Krauthammer’s, one might think the critics were five years old. They seem to think that the hard work of rebuilding America’s reputation in the world, a reputation that the very same critics and their confreres spent years dousing in gasoline and setting on fire, yields instant gratification, as if repairing frayed relations and coordinating international policies could have overnight results. The same people who grew weepy at the thought of History vindicating Bush decades or centuries hence are prepared to declare his successor a failure after less than three months. The people who contributed directly to pushing the good name of our country into the muck are now crying that Obama has not yet, in his first set of meetings, successfully cleaned up their mess. They and their arguments deserve little more than scorn. [...]

The mainstream right’s reaction to Obama’s European trip has reminded me of the claim some on the Anglophone right were making during the election that the election supposedly pitted an advocate of “global universalism” against a defender of American exceptionalism. As I said then, it was never clear which one was supposed to play which role, because both of the candidates were American exceptionalists and universalists in their respective ways, but this basic truth that Obama is an American exceptionalist and one steeped in Americanism is simply inadmissible for some of these people. I don’t know why I have to keep telling so many of you Republican globalists this, but on most of the major policy questions Obama is on your side.

Even though this is incontrovertible and well-established, it has to be denied vigorously in order for the critics to lay sole claim to Americanism and to define it in its most aggressive, nationalistic form. There is a partisan purpose in doing this, I suppose, but more important than mere political advantage is the need to claim some sort of monopoly on national pride. This is a bizarre mutant strain of nationalism on display. You would think American nationalists would tend to see the broad, bipartisan embrace of exceptionalism, hegemonism and national security ideology as vindication of their own views, but instead they look for reasons to complain that left-liberal adherents of these things are lacking in zeal and are somehow intent on insulting the U.S.

As ridiculous as it is, all of this seems misguided and counterproductive for the critics on their own terms. They have gone to the well of national security demagoguery too often in the last decade, and now it is virtually dry. Most people aren’t buying what these critics are selling, and the critics are destroying whatever credibility they might have still had.

Here, taking on a "typical [Jonah] Goldberg production:

It shouldn’t surprise me, but Jonah Goldberg is mixing up conceptual categories and mashing together foreign policy positions that don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other in this column. In other words, it’s another typical Goldberg production. Consider this jumble:

Or take a look at Cuba. There’s a fresh effort under way, particularly from the left wing of the Democratic party, to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Just this week, members of the Congressional Black Caucus junketed to Cuba to celebrate the heroism of Fidel Castro.

The arguments in favor of lifting the embargo are routinely swaddled in talk of realism. The Cold War is over; it’s time to throw away anti-Communist anachronisms. The only way to change Cuba for the better is to “engage it” with trade and tourism and exchange programs. The funny thing is, if you made the exact same arguments about South Africa in the 1980s, many of the same people would call you not merely an ideologue but a racist for not supporting sanctions. Indeed, today the anti-Israeli sanctions movement is infested with people who claim we must lift the embargo on Cuba.

This is a mess, which isn’t helped by the vague generalizations. It is strange that Goldberg chooses to cite a policy that is roundly condemned as a failure in his indictment of realism. The embargo of Cuba is obviously an anachronism and a complete failure on its own terms, and ending it and restoring normal relations with Cuba are long overdue. Normalization of relations with communist Vietnam occurred fourteen years ago, and obviously normalization with China took place thirty-seven years ago, and it is pretty much indisputable that this engagement and the subsequent commercial relationship established with both countries have been beneficial to those countries (or at least to portions of the population of those countries who would otherwise not have benefited). While critics of large trade deficits might be skeptical about how much all of this has benefited the United States, as far as I know there are virtually no proponents of a status quo Cuba policy who worry about such things. [...] 

The way to tell an ideologue from a realist, and the reason realists are not simply ideologues posing as something else, is that the ideologue will persist in a course of action long after it has failed and long after everyone knows it has failed because he thinks that his “values” demand it. Instead of “let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” the ideologue says, “I am right, and the world can go to hell if it doesn’t agree.” The ideologue is terrified of having to make adjustments and adapt to the world as it really is, because these adjustments reveal to the ideologue just how far removed from that reality he has become. The ideologue keeps redefining the justification for the policy, he keeps rewriting history to suit his own purposes, and he never accepts responsibility for the failure of his ideas, because he believes they have never been faithfully followed. For the realist, cutting one’s losses and reassessing the merits of a policy are always supposed to be possibilities, but for the ideologue the former is equivalent to surrender and the latter is inconceivable. In his greatest confusion of all, Goldberg manages to mix up realists with their opposites.

Imagine the Times actually had the gumption to put a right leaning voice that wasn't a party apparatchik - one willing to level criticism at his or her side of the ideological spectrum when warranted (while not exactly sparing the left)?  Now that would be an interesting read.

Comments

[cd]

The drawback to Larison is that his strength is foreign policy, which is sadly marred by his being a Russophile/Slavophile. He sincerely doesn't comprehend or want to believe that the storyline linking the many conflicts around the CIS periphery is the decaying and slow dismemberment of Russian empire. That denialism just doesn't fly with much of the NYT subscriber base.

Douthat is about domestic policy and the right wing third of the country. I don't find him persuasive, but he's connected with that side's elites and does a fairly honest job trying to defend the almost indefensible.

[Eric Martin]

cd: As I said, I think Douthat is decent - and better than a lot of other options.

That said, Larison is not allergic to domestic debates, and weighs in with some regularity. But yeah, definitely a foreign policy guy. But then, Brooks has the domestic brief already covered.

[rea]

I'm not otherwise familiar with his writings, but you quote him saying such sensible things--obviously he is not qualified to hold one of the right wing slots at the Times.

[lowellfield]

I don't claim deep familiarity with Larison, but I think the Times would have probably been screening for a "functional" rather than properly "ideological" conservative, so all this sensible Obama-defending/Goldberg-bashing would have hurt rather than helped.

But then again I read the NYT and I would much rather read Larison than Douthat (who's a douche, and just not that interesting), so maybe you're right.

[OCSteve]

I get a kick that the “paper of record” having one right-of-center columnist is such blog-fodder. The ombudsman has gone on record admitting that every section of the paper (including what is supposed to be hard news) slants liberal – but one conservative columnist is a major threat…

If he says stupid crap mock him for that. Go for it. Make it funny and I’ll even laugh.

[C.S.]

I get a kick that the “paper of record” having one right-of-center columnist is such blog-fodder.

Which is the "one" you refer to here? Brooks? Douthat? Could you possibly mean Friedman -- who, with all of his war cheerleading and unabashed capitalism-is-next-to-godlisim could be easily mistaken for a right-of-center scribe? Certainly you don't mean the trivial and relentlessly anti-feminist Dowd, right? Could you mean Henthoff? Does he still write for them? Is he still as anti-choice as he used to be?

Please, OCSteve, clear up this dilemma for us.

[Nate]

Man, that wacky liberal New York Times! What with their "Labor: How to Destroy Capital" section that replaced the "Business" section, and who can forget their blistering denunciations of the hijacking of the 200 election, the invasion of Iraq, the constant refrains against an inflated housing market and financial sector.

Or, y'know, not. The Times's editor might like to pat himself on the back and say "Oh, well, of course we're liberal on social issues, we're cosmopolitan New Yorkers!" but on the real questions of the day, the New York Times is another corporate Wall Street paper, full of stenographers. Not nearly as blatant or as false as anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, or as compromised as anything with GE's tentacles in it, but it's really a stretch to call it "liberal" in any meaningful sense, I think

[Turbulence]

I get a kick that the “paper of record” having one right-of-center columnist is such blog-fodder.

What are you talking about? The issue Eric raised here isn't that the NYT has a conservative columnist; it is that given their stated need for another conservative columnist, they could have picked someone a lot smarter than they did.

Don't you think everyone would be better off if the NYT's conservative writers were smarter? Shouldn't you be agreeing with Eric here?

[Gary Farber]

"Could you mean Henthoff? Does he still write for them? Is he still as anti-choice as he used to be?"

I'm not sure who "Henthoff" is, but if possibly you mean Nat Hentoff, he's never been a NY Times columnist.

[superdestroyer]

After reading the last twenty blog posts by Mr. Larison, I can see why liberal progressives would love him. His constant harping about how bad conservatives are and his inability to criticize anything about the Obama Administration is an odd qualification for the right of center columnist of the NY Times.

[Turbulence]

his inability to criticize anything about the Obama Administration

The ignorance on display here is just stunning. Larison has extensively criticized Obama; it just so happens that he thinks that most of the criticisms levied by people like Gingrich or Limbaugh are really dumb.

[Turbulence]

And for the record, as a liberal progressive, I don't love Larison. I think he's irrational about some policy areas and I think his association with racist sociopaths is indicative of defects in his character. Having said all that, he still strikes me as a better writer and thinker than Douhat and a vast improvement over Kristol.

[gwangung]

After reading the last twenty blog posts by Mr. Larison, I can see why liberal progressives would love him. His constant harping about how bad conservatives are and his inability to criticize anything about the Obama Administration is an odd qualification for the right of center columnist of the NY Times.

Comments are purely in terms of liberal opposition and not of the ideas espoused by Larison.

Conservatives, in my day, did much better than that. They were not nearly as lazy in their thinking.

[C.S.]

Oops . . . you're right, Gary. I was thinking Kristof but that just elided with Hentoff and the rest is history.

Larger point still holds, though.

[Eric Martin]

His constant harping about how bad conservatives are and his inability to criticize anything about the Obama Administration is an odd qualification for the right of center columnist of the NY Times.

Um, please refer to the post I excerpted above. You don't have to look that hard, or search his archives. The very post I flagged is critical of Obama.

for example:

The mainstream right’s reaction to Obama’s European trip has reminded me of the claim some on the Anglophone right were making during the election that the election supposedly pitted an advocate of “global universalism” against a defender of American exceptionalism. As I said then, it was never clear which one was supposed to play which role, because both of the candidates were American exceptionalists and universalists in their respective ways, but this basic truth that Obama is an American exceptionalist and one steeped in Americanism is simply inadmissible for some of these people. I don’t know why I have to keep telling so many of you Republican globalists this, but on most of the major policy questions Obama is on your side.

[Eric Martin]

OCSteve:

As pointed out above, the Times has always had at least two clear right wing ideologues, and at least a couple of centrists.

Friedman and Kristoff are centrists. Friedman was a big time cheerleader for the Iraq war and globalization.

David Brooks and Douthat are clear right wingers.

As for my complaint, it wasn't that the Times felt the need to add a second righty to join Brooks, it was that they didn't choose a righty like Larison.

[jonp72]

The purpose of having Douthat on the NYTimes op-ed pages is not for intellectual or ideological "balance," but to avoid flak from the conservative movement. It's to keep the Right from saying to the Times, "Nice newspaper you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it."

[KS]

I think that Larison would make for a better column, but the advantage of Douthat is that, by reading his column in the NYT, we can figure out (maybe) what the prevailing right-wing trends, thoughts, and ideologies are.

Say what you want about Kristol, but his partisan hackery at least helped those who read it to understand what the Republicans were doing, though there's no real way to elucidate what they're doing...

[A Squirrel]

I find him to be a great read.

However, I think "conservative" means "movement conservative", a sect that does not include Larison. Douthat will fit in and play the game and stay within the boundaries, and I can't see Larison doing that.

I also thought Bacevic would have been a fantastic choice, albeit as much a pipe dream as Larison.

[Eric Martin]

Agreed on Bacevich. Better choice even. As much of a pipe dream as well.

But hey, we might as well lobby from our little perch.