Anyone hear Rachel Maddow interview Joe Klein this morning?

[whometense]

Rachel is brave. And after all the talk this week about MoDo's cowardly, appeaserish, dem-bashing column it was refreshing to hear an actual liberal confront a "liberal" columnist head on and accuse him of being unfairly hard on dems.

They were discussing Joe's latest column in TIME:

How to Stay Out of Power
Why liberal democrats are playing too fast and too loose with issues of war and peace

In fact, liberal Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on these issues as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo's family in the right-to-die case last year.

But there is a difference. National security is a far more important issue, and until the Democrats make clear that they will err on the side of aggressiveness in the war against al-Qaeda, they will probably not regain the majority in Congress or the country.

First, I think we can safely call Joe Klein a "once liberal" columnist. Second, during the interview he spilled the fact that 9 people from his town were killed on 9/11/2001. There doesn't appear to be any doubt that he was scarred (and scared) by that terrible event.

I'm going to have to listen to the podcast later to cement my impressions, but Klein was using what struck me as very odd reasoning. While admitting the Bush administration is "heinous", he also argues that "not everything they do is heinous." I'd be really curious to hear what anyone else thought. My impression was that Klein is one of those people on whom the administrations's perpetual fear tactics are working very well.

Podcast will be available later here, if anyone's interested: http://www.airamericaplace.com/archive.php?mode=show&id=17

[wisteria]

1. There are dumb ways and smart ways to be aggressive, apparently

Klein supports the dumb ways, because they offer immediate results, not always good, but effective in some small way.

[ProSense]

2. Klein is a fool

Klein's logic: Oh, he lied the country into war and killed thousands of innocent people, but at least he didn't pull the trigger himself and he is going after the terrrrist.

Fool!

[ginnyinWI]

3. I heard it

Both made some valid points, but Rachael won the day.

He's right that we shouldn't just assume that everything * does is illegal and a bad idea, because that weakens our argument. We have to be objective and stick to the facts.

But Rachael is right that we have every reason to be alarmed here, and shouldn't just forget about it and go back to business as usual. It's better to err on the side of caution when our Constitutional rights are at stake.

Freedom, not Fear!

[ProSense]

4. I disagree with Klein even on that point.

Which elected Democrat, and he is talking about elected Democrats, believes everything Bush does is bad and illegal? Klein wasn't talking about bloggers rants when he wrote the article. Klein's argument is biased, flawed and weak. If he wan't to promote fear go ahead, but don't try to disguise it as concern for Democrats' well being.

[ginnyinWI]

5. I didn't read his article yet, so maybe you're right

I was just going on what he said on the show.