Pundits

I was reading Susan Estrich’s latest column today and saw the following:

 

No Democrats voted for the war — they voted to give the president authority, which hindsight makes clear that he had already decided, long before, how to use.

 

Now, while this may be technically true, one would be hard pressed to state that Democratic Congressmen were somehow suprised that the President actually went to war. Let’s go back a few years. It is post-9/11 and the citizens of the United States are clamoring for payback. Politicians are looking for a way to guarantee a path to re-election and having their parties represented favorably so they side with the people. When the vote came up, the members of both parties knew the President was planning on actually following through; there was no suprise here. In fact, it was not until month’s later that the feigned surprise (and Estrichian rewriting of history) began. If you are in doubt, do a search.

 

This leads us to a few possibilities: The Democrats are stupid, ignorant, not paying attention, whores or they knew what they were doing. Let me explain:

• Stupid – yeah, we knew that the President was asking for the resolution, but we figured he just wanted to have the vote to appease the public.
• Ignorant – yeah, we knew that the President was asking for the resolution, but we were sure he would never actually do anything about it.
• Whores – We were against it, but afraid our Johns would leave us for other whores if we did not vote for it.
• Knew what they were doing – One day Susan, Al, Janeane, et al will become an apologist for us, so we can play this either way and claim that was our idea all along.

Now, this is not an indictment of the Democrats, as all politicos are the object of my scorn. Nor is this an indictment of Estrich, as pundits on both sides play to their audience much like the politicos. The focus is the annoyance of revisionist history, no matter which side of the aisle one is on.