Question Begging

Economist Brad DeLong excoriates the American press for being Bush's lapdogs: (h/t Rebecca Blood)

Why didn’t the American press corps cover the Bush administration properly for its first five years? I really do not know. I do know that the world cannot afford to rely again on America’s press for its information: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So I appeal to all of you working for newspapers, radio, and television stations outside the United States: it is to you that we – including those of us in America – must look to discover what our own government is doing.

*Sigh*

As I read this tripe, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the notion that Brad is not - and never has been - a fan of our current president:

It was the summer of 2000 when I began asking Republicans I know – generally people who might be natural candidates for various sub-cabinet policy positions in a Republican administration – how worried they were that the Republican presidential candidate, George W. Bush, was clearly not up to the job. They were not worried, they told me, that Bush was inadequately briefed and strangely incurious for a man who sought the most powerful office in the world.

Not to worry, Brad is told by his Republican friends:

Bush knows his strengths and weaknesses...he will focus on being America’s Queen Elizabeth II, and will let people like Colin Powell and Paul O’Neill be America’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Alas, Brad's Republican friends were wrong. Bush rejected the advice of his "betters" and essentially tried to run the country like a bored frat boy:

A strange picture of Bush emerged from conversations with sub-cabinet administration appointees, their friends, and their friends of friends. He was not just under-briefed, but also lazy: he insisted on remaining under-briefed. He was not just incurious, but also arrogant: he insisted on making uninformed decisions, and hence made decisions that were essentially random. And he was stubborn: once he had made a decision – even, or rather especially, if it was glaringly wrong and stupid – he would never revisit it.

Sheesh! What a guy, huh? I mean, who could ever doubt what "sub-cabinet administration appointees, their friends, and their friends of friends" are saying, right? Brad continues:

So, by the summer of 2001, a pattern was set that would lead British observer Daniel Davies to ask if there was a Bush administration policy on anything of even moderate importance that had not been completely bollixed up. But if you relied on either the Washington Post or the New York Times, you would have had a very hard time seeing it. Today, it is an accepted fact that the kindest thing you can say about the Bush administration is that it is completely incompetent...

So, let's sum up, shall we? In the summer of 2000 - before the elections - Brad is so concerned about a Republican presidential candidate who is "clearly not up to the job" that he asks his "Republican friends" why they're not worried. They tell him that Bush, like Dirty Harry, knows his limitations, that he'll make a swell Queen and let other, smarter people - people that he'll appoint, naturally - do the actual work of running the country.

But darn that G.W.! He just won't listen. And, thanks to Brad's having the inside scoop with his legion of "friends", we learn that Bush is lazy, arrogant and stubborn, and this is all within the first year of taking office! And so, the kindest thing we can now say about the Bush administration is that it's completely incompetent.

And the kindest thing I can say about Brad's post is that it's just another ad-hominem attack and one of the worst examples of question-begging I've ever seen. A more appropriate response would be to quote a line from the movie Time After Time:

"Herbert, a bigger crock of shit I never heard."

What he's really asking is why hasn't the American press covered the Bush administration the way he sees it. Why hasn't the press agreed to the "accepted fact" that - at the very least - the Bush administration is clearly incompetent? Why doesn't the world see the Bush administration the way he does?

Not that Brad offers any support for his belief, other than his conversations with administration insiders and their friends, and their friends of friends. Is that not the lamest qualifying statement you've ever heard? Try it out yourself: "Based on conversations with sub-cabinet appointees, their friends, and their friends of friends, I now believe..."what, exactly? But Brad doesn't have to come up with any, you know, actual evidence because to him it's an "accepted fact". And that the accepted fact simply mirrors a belief he held before the man was even elected only goes to show that he's been right all along.

I guess being lazy, stubborn and arrogant isn't such a bad thing after all, is it?