Thursday, December 07, 2006
 

Gates' in, so what?

Geez, all the geschreing over the supposed Democratic cave in on the Gates nomination for BushSecDef should just please stop already, it's just plain silly.

It's a basic fact that no one that Bush nominates is going to start off without being in rough agreement with the legitimacy and aims of the Iraq War -- that's just a given, so the universe of candidates for the job just does not include people who are in accord with Democrats with an anti-Iraq orientation. And no one who runs the DoD for Bush is going to make any drastic change in policy without first convincing Bush about it (or, rather, Cheney, who would then sell it to Bush), so what you want isn't someone who's already on your side (who isn't going to be nominated in the first place), but someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with reality and is capable of dealing rationally with it. Such a person, when presented with the facts of the situation, has a least chance of coming around to a realistic perspective on the war, and then might have a chance of selling it to those at the top. That's the kind of person you're hoping for, and the proof of whether the nomineee is that kind of person is not going to be found in the broad statements of policy belief which the nominee will make under Senatorial questioning, but in the tone that underlies those statements, and other hints and indications.

In short, the devil is in the details, and, using this criteria, it seemed to me that Gates gave a passable performance and provided enough evidence of being an empiricist that there was no particular justification for turning him down. It's not that I think that Gates is a great guy, or the best possible choice for the job, or unsullied by his past history, it's just that he gave very little reason for Senators to withhold their consent, and enough of a glimmering of possible realistic skepticism to make the vote slightly easier.

Politics is the art of the possible, and does not traffic with perfection. As we've seen with the right-wing takeover of Congress and the White House, obsession with absolutes is not a good thing and does not lead to positive results. We should be careful and not fall into the same trap of prizing ideological purity over empirical value, realistic evaluation and the dictates of practicality.

So stop the whining, please, this was not a fight worth waging, or that we were going to win.

Ed Fitzgerald | 12/07/2006 01:59:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







by

Ed Fitzgerald

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