Value Judgment: Squirm, Billy, Squirm

Value Judgment is a daily weblog written by two independent voters on the eastern seaboard of the United States. VJ will focus on the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaigns, including strategy, tactics, and substance. The authors supported Howard Dean in the Democratic primary. Accordingly, his activities will be a prominent topic on this site.

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May 14, 2004

Squirm, Billy, Squirm

Last night on The Daily Show Jon Stewart eviscerated Prince Neocon himself, Bill Kristol. In fact, that's not quite accurate. Jon Stewart handed Kristol a lovely little teaspoon, and Kristol eviscerated himself with it, at one point agreeing with Jon that Bush "did drive us into a ditch" and unable to come up with anything but the feeblest and thinnest reasons for why he's still supporting Bush.

It was lovely to watch. Kristol, after all, is one of the prime movers behind the neocon-take-over-the-world agenda known as the Project for a New American Century. Dubya went along with what the PNAC crowd told him to do and it's resulted in nothing but disaster. In a few months, look for the neocons to start squawking that Dubya just didn't do it right. Nothing wrong with their ideas, you see, just that they had the wrong implementer. Anyway, Visible Hand has a more in-depth write-up of the Stewart-Kristol interview:

Kristol just hemmed & hawed, and at first tried to claim Kerry would cut & run. Stewart cut him off, noting that's not Kerry's position, and indeed that Kerry has even called for more of our guys, and for more guys that aren't our guys. Kristol really didn't have any answer, and as Stewart kept pressing him, Kristol at one point even said something like "well yes, he's driven us into a ditch....oh wow, i walked into that one, you set me, well, uh, yes, but..."

It really was quite amusing. And rather pathetic that one of the biggest conservative voices out there couldn't muster a better defense of Bush than that.

At one point, Kristol even mumbled something about how he liked coming to New York because he could be more truthful there than in Washington. What is the matter with these people? Hello? Television, much? Ever heard of the INTERNET?? We can see you from all the way out here in the suburbs, you know. Good grief.

Posted by J at May 14, 2004 03:43 PM

Comments

I've been thinking about that appearance since I saw it. Here's my take: Kristol hasn't been shy about his disappointment with the way Iraq went for a while - although he's still faithful to the cause. I don't think he's dopey enough to let something slip on any tv program. Like all idealogues, he's ticked that his brilliant ideas were screwed up by the people who implemented them.

Posted by: eRobin at May 15, 2004 08:38 AM

Well, I'm not sure how much was deliberate and how much was just him being really tired -- he looked like crap -- and speaking the truth plainly ("into the ditch") rather than obfuscating ("veered off the road") which he switched to after accusing Jon of setting him up. It doesn't much matter to me, though. And I agree with you about what their eventual line will be; as I said in the post, soon we'll be hearing " Nothing wrong with [our] ideas, you see, just that they had the wrong implementer."

Atrios has been observing for awhile now that, if nothing else, this Iraq debacle should serve to utterly repudiate the neocons. It should, but only if we had a working press corps. We don't, so I suspect that if Kerry wins, they'll scurry back under the rocks and try to infect a new batch of naive graduate students with their dreams of empire.

Posted by: J at May 15, 2004 10:40 AM