Politics, the Washington Post, and

Politics, the Washington Post, and War – Two items in the Washington Post today add to the growing list of examples of partisan editorializing invading its news stories.

Item One – Dana Milbank, the former New Republic writer, has a front page story that could have been a press release from the Democrats: “Democrats Question Iraq Timing: Talk of War Distracts From Election Issues.” The headline nicely reveals the fuzziness of the story’s line between what the Democrats say (they question timing) and what Milbank says (war talk distracts from election issues [or what he thinks should be election issues?]). The large continuation headline on p. A6 is “White House Denies Iraq War is Wag-the-Dog Ploy.” The Democrats, aided by stories like this, would apparently like to shift the debate from Iraq to the Administration’s motives and timing.

Let us assume, for the same of argument, something the Administration heatedly denies, that politics does figure into the desire for Congressional authorization before the November elections. Should we not then also assume that politics plays a similar role in the Democrats’ desire, as the article quotes Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D, Del), that Iraq “should be taken as far out of the realm of politics as possible”? That is, if the Republicans are playing politics with national security in seeking early Congressional authorization, are not the Democrats doing the same thing in seeking to delay it?

. . . Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, made an Iraq vote explicitly political, saying, “People are going to want to know, before the elections, where their representatives stand.”

That infuriated Democrats. “It only reinforces skepticism about the timing,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative who was Al Gore’s campaign spokesman….

A more interesting question is why war talk hurts the Democrats, since it was Bush pere and the Republicans who left Saddam in power. Perhaps it is the Democrats’ position, or confusion over their position, and not the timing that hurts them.

Aside from the politics, what of the merits? Should matters of war be taken out of politics? Did today’s Bidens and Daschles think that it was inappropriate to make a political issue of war when Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern challenged our policies in Vietnam? I don’t recall their doing so, but then my memory’s not what it used to be.

Item Two – Helen Dewar has a half-page story on p. A4 about the changing of the guard among Senate Republicans as old war horses such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm exit the stage and a new generation of conservatives moves to the fore.

Dewar quotes Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, one of the newer conservative leaders in the Senate, on the new, smoother style.

“President Bush’s brand of compassionate conservatism is really the definitive theme of conservatism today,” Brownback said, citing issues such as help for faith-based charities. “It’s not hard-edged,” he said. “It’s caring.”

But to the all-knowing Dewar, this new conservativism is nothing but a clever fraud, a rhetorical fog intended to disguise conservatism’s true colors. For support, she turns to that well-know source of expertise on the nature of conservatism, the liberal Brookings Institution (presumably no one was available to enlighten her about the new conservatism from the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, or Cato):

Thomas E. Mann, who watches Congress from the Brookings Institution, agreed with Brownback that the new-breed conservatives have a lot in common with Bush. “They reflect the president, who is a very conservative man on things like taxes, missile defense and social issues but has figured a way to … appear more moderate than he is,” Mann said. “They have the same firm commitment to core conservative principles and policies, but they pursue them with more soothing rhetoric and a seemingly more accommodating style.”

There is of course nothing wrong with the Washington Post, or any newspaper, publishing a piece arguing that Bush and the new generation of conservative leaders are frauds attempting to disguise their true colors. That’s what opinion pages are for. There is something wrong, in my opinion, with putting it in the news section and thus pretending that it’s by a reporter reporting the news.