I am, to be clear, a fan of Jon Chait. I think he's a superb writer, an impressively clear thinker, and an asset to liberal punditry. But this 80-20 rule he's thought up is weak stuff. His argument, near as I can tell it, is that the blogosphere is treating TNR unfairly because the magazine is 80% liberal and 20% neocon, but the blogs speak as if the ratio were reversed. Doing so is a misrepresentation.
Well, I guess. Problem is, the magazine is 80% foreign policy, 20% domestic, at least in emphasis. That makes sense: the magazine's primary funder is animated by a neo-connish, Zionistic foreign policy. Its editor over the last couple of years was a straight foreign affairs guy who just wrote a book about the Democrats and terrorism, a book that stemmed from an article he wrote advocating, essentially, a purge of MoveOn.org for insufficient hawkery during a war that proved a massive mistake. Add in that, since 9/11, the national agenda has been dominated by questions of war and peace, and that 20% where the magazine breaks with the left has come to occupy much more than 1/5th of the publication's energy and reputation. Worse, The New Republic was wrong about Iraq, and en route to being wrong, they were merciless in attempting to discredit those who were right.
Now, let's be clear: I love The New Republic. I wrote for the magazine. I was proud to do so. I was prouder yet to write an article attacking Charles Murray, who TNR had regrettably popularized during the Sullivan era. But TNR has spent the last couple of years defining itself in opposition to the blogosphere and the anti-war left. And no matter how deep the cracks in the magazine's internal consensus, its external projection has been crystal clear. Nevertheless, the bottom line here is actually a good one for them. The blogosphere takes the magazine seriously. When angered by its articles, they rise up in fury. When poked by Jon Chait, they're compelled to punch back. Indeed, they take The New Republic more seriously, I fear, than they take my beloved American Prospect, possibly because TNR hurts them so good (if TNR has defined itself against the blogosphere, the blogosphere has been no less eager to define itself against TNR).
So while Chait may complain that we all agree 80% of the issues, he should keep in mind that that's different than agreeing 80% of the time. And frankly, given what The New Republic is, these spats, fights, and grudges are probably healthy for the institution, both as a way of keeping it relevant and a method for keeping it honest. The enmity here is, I think, a mutually beneficial arrangement, where TNR gets to decry the barbarians at the gates while the blogs get to blast the crusty establishmentarians loitering in the halls of power. That neither characterization is particularly true (Kos is more powerful within the party than TNR, and TNR is less locked into a certain consensus than most bloggers) isn't quite the point.
