Brad DeLong's strike at Crowley's small-minded article is much better than my takedown (which you can find below). The problem with the article (which some of my colleagues disagree with, so it can clearly be read different ways is the crushing condescension and disdain Crowley evinces for Clinton's wonkery. Clinton talks too much, he's boring, and while he's talking too much and being boring he's enjoying it. Putting aside the faux-populism about folks who've never been poor spearheading antipoverty programs -- this is Mike Crowley, coming to you from da street! -- the sheer fact that Crowley sees fit to mock and poke Clinton for being too-engaged with the issues of the day explains quite a lot about how we got Bush. As Brad writes:
I have not yet figured out why so much of our elite press--the Crowleys, the Kakutanis, the Isikoffs, and the Kosovas--is so... what should I call it? Feckless. Corrupt (in the sense of well-rotted). Decadent. Why does William Saletan find it funny that Kerry tries hard to give nuanced, reasonably-complete answers to questions about issues with nuances? Why do Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff cover the government--rather than, say, cover something like advances in bartending--if they find debates over policy the equivalent of crossing the Gedrosian Desert? Why does Michiko Kakutani think it pointless and boring to wake up early to watch the inauguration of the first democratically-elected president in sixteen years in a country of 130 million people?
It is a mystery to me.
It is, however, one reason that we are saddled with an incompetent president like George W. Bush. As David Frum writes, it has long been clear to insiders that Bush is not a "diligent manager of the office of the presidency, [or] a close student of public policy, [or] a careful balancer of risks and benefits"--that, in short, George W. Bush is totally unqualified to be president, totally unprepared to make the decisions a president has to make. But by and large the elite press has simply not cared about the necessary qualifications to be a good president, and fears a president who is qualified to be president. For, after all, strikes them as bizarre and weird for somebody to actually know where Lesotho is.
