UB (It really needs to get busier here at the office!)

Thanks for the reply! I hadn’t realized that the thread was essentially dormant when I commented, so I’m glad that someone read it. I also imagine that it’s fair to point out that getting excited when someone reads a comment on a blog is validating, but hey, I’m a dork.

In any case, I may have been reading into Neo’s remarks, but at least for myself, often I end up noticing an off-hand comment and it forms a seed for a thought experiment and those experiments are what contain the interesting information. I hadn’t read into her post a condemnation of Obama, per se, but rather a ‘vivid particular’ from which one can make observations about the Presidency in general.

But then again, I could be wrong.

BRD

You wrote that you were perplexed by the:

“apparent inability to comment on something unfortunate or less flattering to one’s own viewpoint without immediately, invariably, and repeatedly drawing in Bush for comparison. I mean if someone else makes a comment about Hillary and pant suits, if the first gut reaction is to start with “Well, you should see how Bush dresses!” then that strikes me as a bit off.”

The thing about this is that Neo and others frequently make arguments of this sort.

“The Left is disgraceful because it always does X” or “Democrats in Congress are slimy because they are always doing Y.”

Is it not legitimate to counter these types of arguments by showing that behaviors X and Y are not exclusive to Democrats or the Left?

I mean, the behaviors may indeed be slimy, the pantsuit may indeed be ugly, but why should the assertion that these things are exclusive to one side of the political spectrum, or its members, be allowed to stand?

Neo took an off-the-cuff remark by a political candidate that he misspoke because he was tired, and extrapolated from that fact that he is “too quick to make excuses” and he and his entire party are suffering from a “lack of stamina” and are thus unfit to run the country.

Given the amount of slack that Bush gets for all his verbal mis-steps, that seems a bit much.

All the while she was completely (and conveniently) ignoring the larger question of whether or not the Iraq War has affected the readiness of the National Guard to do its duty at home.

Talk about getting hung up on the “non-essential.”

But this is all small potatoes. I think that, by far, the most interesting thing in the post is the analogy drawn at end:

In a larger sense—and perhaps I’m overdoing the analogy here, but what the hey—Obama’s willingness to admit to exhaustion mirrors the Democrats’ willingness to admit to being so weary of Iraq that they want it to be over, and immediately. Arguments about the pros and cons of the war aside, in strategic terms the clamor for the pullout signals a lack of stamina that can only be immensely heartening to our enemies.

As much as anything else, that the particular objections to the post were about 1) comparison to Bush, or 2) being ignored by the media, rather than the broader questions of endurance in decision makers and the body politic as a whole would seem to me to signal a strong tendency to get hung up on the non-essential.

But, then again, I could be wrong.

BRD

“clinton says he misspoke” = 0 results.
“clinton said he meant to say” = 0 results
“clinton said that what he meant was” = 0 results
“clinton said he was mistaken” = 0 results

The man is either perfect or pathologically averse to admitting errors.

Lee, I remember it being more egregious. Kerry’s first response was general indignance: he wasn’t going apologize but Bush should, Republicans knew exactly what he meant to say, and he was sick of attacks from stuffed suits…etc.

I thought his “joke” came out the way he intended, but it was minor compared to his ridiculous defense.

Try boredom?

“I feel NO need to seek out people on the net who disagree with me and bludgeon them into submission with my self-absorbed arguments.”

So you’re saying that it’s terrible for people on a blog with a comments section open to anyone to hear from people who disagree with them? Would it be better if everyone here always agreed and reinforced everything everyone already believed?

Also, you just can’t help “psychologizing” this – in what way is disagreement self-absorbed?

“It seems particularly vigorous at sites run by people like neoneocon or Ann Althouse–individuals who the Left think should be “one of theirs.””

Same deal; more pseudo-analysis.

“Only you know why you are driven to come here regularly and rail against such a reality.”

Rail against reality?

I love theater of the absurd!