Dr. Ambinder Will See You Now, You Screaming Nutjobs

Marc Ambinder poses this question in his April 23 article in The Atlantic : “Have Conservatives Gone Mad? ”

Ambinder lays blithe and, according to no less a source than himself, undeniable claim to the liberal journalism’s monopoly on political veritas, identifying “the most trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama” coming “not from the right, but the left.” On the other hand, he asserts, “mainstream conservative voices are embracing theories that are, to use Julian Sanchez’s phrase, ‘untethered’ to the real world.”

Before examining that assertion, let’s list a few more of Ambinder’s pronouncements about the journalistic right.

The base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking. It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors.

Well, thank goodness he laid that to rest. Q.E.D. Still, if therapy really is a substitute for thinking, Ambinder should consider changing his surname to Freud.

First, regarding “trenchant and effective criticism of President Obama,” one need look no further than George Will, who has even dared to buck party ideology to challenge the President’s right-leaning Afghanistan policy; no further than Charles Krauthammer, who has banged the deteriorating U.S.-Israel relations drum for weeks now; John Bolton, who has criticized Obama’s post-exceptionalist view of the U.S. for months. If ever there was a trio of high-decibel entertaining sloganeers, surely it has to be this triumvirate of titillating talk. The Three Tenors, look out.

Or are we to understand that “trenchant and effective criticism” can only emanate from the left? Perhaps we misunderstand the definition of “trenchant and effective.” No doubt the modern examplar of trenchant thinking is Keith Olbermann’s recent “effective criticism” of Scott Brown as “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.” Of course, Olbermann later (trenchantly) added the missing “sexist” to complete the portrait.

[youtube uLjAahyKfp0 nolink]

Second, as for the “bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking” charge, Ambinder must have missed Paul Ryan’s elaborate “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan of action that addresses everything from the massive debt burden to the creation of jobs and health reform issues. While Ryan himself is a politician, not a journalist, many members, Michael Medved among them, of the ineffectual, un-trenchant right media consistently steer their followers to this detailed and highly considered political plan for future American political res gestae. Nor is this the only such example of the marketeering of genuine political solutions on the right.

Finally, what Ambinder fails to mention and what is undeniable is that both right and left have their fair share of both clowns and Clausewitzes. Before Mr. Ambinder pontificates on the relative openness or closedness of the right’s epistemology, he might do well to review the other side’s no less myopic tendencies.

In that regard, the journalistic left apparently has no interest in laying claim to one monopoly–humility. Perhaps W.H. Auden’s 1937 “Letter to Lord Byron” might inspire it to reconsider exploring this currently wide-open, uncornered market. The mountain of ideas, Auden reminds us, is a spacious one and offers room for many.

Parnassus after all is not a mountain,

Reserved for A-1 climbers such as you;

It’s got a park, it’s got a public fountain.

The most I ask is leave to share a pew

With Bradford or with Cottam, that will do:

To pasture my few silly sheep with Dyer

And picnic on the lower slopes with Prior.

Change Bradford, Cottam, Dyer, and Prior to Krauthammer, Will, Medved, and Bolton and you’ll have the modern equivalent of some very trenchant Parnassus-dwellers indeed. I leave it to the left to fill in its own names.

Which brings us back to Ambinder’s original question. Have conservatives gone mad? Who better to answer that question than Dr. Freud himself? But in his absence, we’ll have to settle for Dr. Ambinder.