"ARCANE." Ritual disclaimer: Keith Olbermann is a friend of mine, has been for years, ever since we were baby reporters in Boston and all the way through my ill-fated attempt to be hepcat enough to get hired by the embryonic ESPN 2.
Last night on his show, he hosted Dana Milbank of The Washington Post for one of his regular state-of-the-pols chats. The topic was the ongoing bipartisan debate between a Republican president and a Republican Congress over what sort of authoritarian powers the president should have. Milbank resolutely stuck to the argument that this debate is a good one because it shifts the political debate away from the ongoing debacle in Iraq to the president's war on the evil terrorists, and that's to the White House's advantage. At one point, I believe that Milbank used the word "arcane" to describe the details of the fight over what kind of torture we'll allow. Olbermann, ever the gracious host, seemed a bit stunned by this.
I'm not gracious. So I'll say it. Dana Milbank seems like a good egg and he's generally a decent reporter. However, if the parameters of our political life are now that we seriously discuss whether talking about torturing people is enough to blunt the political disadvantage of talking about an illegal war based on stovepiped intelligence and the messianic fantasies of a bunch of think-tank cowboys and war profiteers, we are well and truly lost in this country. I don't care if Milbank wants to make a buck out of it, but he should at least recognize the bloody surrealism of the discussion.
--Charles P. Pierce
