Got him! One of our hobbies is finding instances where David Broder of the Washington Post reveals his political inclinations. Most of the time he writes in a bland manner, citing Conventional Wisdom, or framing Republican mischief within a "let's hope we'll
all be better behaved in the future" approach.
But in his OpEd column
today, he makes it pretty sure he likes Bush. Look at one line: (emp add)
Supporters and critics can agree that the nation is fortunate that its leader is a man prepared to cope with radically changed circumstances, a person of fixed principles but not one wedded to policies of the past.
That statement is meaningless. "Not wedded to policies of the past" is a virtue or a vice, depending on which policies you are talking about. It's one thing to not be wedded to the male-only suffrage policy of the past. It's another not to be wedded to the "innocent until proven guilty" policy of the past. Oh, and we're supposed to be fortunate to have GWB in the White House? Please.
But then Broder really gets going with this passage: (emp add)
Bush ... boldly (!) set out to recast many fundamental institutions and doctrines. At home, he engineered far-reaching changes in the scale and distribution of taxes, redefined the relationship of the federal government to local schools, ...
Policies for the environment, law enforcement, regulation of business and a dozen other fields were turned around.
Let us translate:
- Bush changed the tax code
- Bush changed something about the school system
- Bush changed environmental policy
- Bush changed regulation of business
- Bush changed other stuff
Broder is touting Bush for merely changing things, but without the courage to say how they were changed (in the instances cited here, elsewhere, in a few cases he describes the nature of the change).
What does it say when a leading pundit heaps praise on Bush without going into the specifics?
posted by Quiddity at 1/20/2005 10:47:00 AM
What it means is that a certain "pundit" has been told in no uncertain terms that he'd better either get on the bandwagon or he'll be working on his suntan down in Gitmo.
Lurch
Well, there's enough subtext in Broder's copy to keep me laughing, starting with the title:
What Lies Ahead For Bush
Subtext = Yes, indeed, what lies is Bush prepared to tell in his second term.
the newly inaugurated George W. Bush...could not imagine the horrors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the demands of war in Afghanistan and IraqSubtext= Of course he couldn't. We know he didn't read/comprehend the August 6th PDB, and his people booted out truthtellers like Shinseki.
On this day of his second inaugural, the only certainty is that the next four years will present challenges as large and unexpected as those of the past.Subtext= If past performance is any predictor of future performance, we're doomed.
many supposed that the clouded circumstances of his election would force Bush into a cautious, minimalist approach to governingSubtext= Conventional wisdom is never right, is it. The dude maxed out political capital that wasn't his to spend.
For me, anyway, the excessive delicacy of all the exceedingly neutral word choices Broder made only serves to underscore the political vulgarity of the Bush people.
Grace Nearing
Scriptoids
