Right and Wrong

I was musing about something to write about this evening and the old James Carville book, "We're Right, They're Wrong" came to mind. Of course, that was back when Carville actually was a "Spirited Progressive" and not a media mogul/whore. I actually liked the book because it argued, as I recall, that fundamentally, progessive ideas are what's best for America and Americans. They also tend to be better for the world.

It got me thinking about the actual arguments about what we're doing as a country, as opposed to the slick marketing and media chicanery that passes for political debate these days. It reminded me of late 2002 and early 2003 as Bush and Company made the case for and then, case or otherwise, invaded Iraq.

In my professional life I am surrounded by conservatives and they uniformly lined up to support the case. I got urgent cell phone calls during Colin Powell's (false) presentation to the UN telling me about the weapons of mass destruction and the mobile labs. Breathless co-workers would race into my office as the war began to report the latest finding (false again) of WMD's. Everyone around me knew that Saddam Hussein was practically sleeping with Osama bin Laden. All work in my office ceased in order to watch as they (in a staged event) pulled down the statue of Saddam, and the consensus was that Bush would be on Mt. Rushmore by the end of 2003.

My conservative colleagues used every imaginable slur- I think they were following some sort of Ann Coulter Talking Points Memo - to malign me and my liberal (you have to say that with contempt) ideas.

Of course, I don't hear much of anything from this group anymore. I was right on every point - not because I'm a brilliant geopolitical thinker, but because I stuck to my progressive instincts and didn't buy the hype. And it wasn't always easy. Because I was too young to really understand Watergate, and a little too something else to get the full measure of Iran Contra, it was hard for me to believe that so many people - our leaders - were just flat lying to take us to war. But as we all know today...

Of course, this is just one of many, many examples of where we progressives have argued - mostly amongst ourselves - that some policy or program espoused by the Bush adminstration was a bad deal. And today, on every point I can think of, we were right.

Which is a very long winded way of recommending this post by Kevin Drum, who addresses this topic from a different angle (and more eloquently) and also manages to get a few digs in at Wal Mart, which always warms my heart.