The Trouble With Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker, of the Mises Institute, blogging on LewRockwell.com, takes me to task for “adoring” Patrick J. Buchanan’s new book, Where the Right Went Wrong:

I’m happy that Justin adores Pat’s new book, and it may be as good as he says. But just last week, I happen to catch Pat on one of those Sunday TV shows and he was asked about what the US should do in Najaf. Bomb them, was Pat’s answer. Bomb them until they comply. It’s the only choice, he said, because otherwise “we” lose the war.

My first thought was that Pat’s isolationist credentials make his call for violence all the more compelling (just as Cato’s call for overthrowing the Taliban was particularly valuable to the Bush administration). Perhaps that is the role that Pat is supposed to play: so that the regime can always say that even Pat Buchanan favors escalation.”

As a long-time aficionado of talking-heads policy-wonk shows, I have to say that Jeff fails to understand an important point: these guys (and gals) are paid to analyze, as well as give their opinions. What Jeff heard and saw (it was The McLaughlin Group) was Pat in his reportorial/analyst mode, wherein the goals and objectives of U.S. policymakers are assumed as the given, and the analysis proceeds from there.

By taking these comments out of context – the context of a show where Buchanan’s anti-interventionist views have been exhaustively expounded – Tucker makes it seem as though Pat is talking out of both sides of his mouth. But anyone who actually reads Buchanan’s book, or even any of his many newspaper columns on the subject, can easily familiarize themselves with his anti-interventionist views.

The key point to make here is that Pat, and the other members of The McLaughlin Group, aren’t paid to just give their opinions: after all, everybody has opinions. But journalists, on the other hand, are supposed to have a store of knowledge about the particular subjects they’re discussing, and this, theoretically, gives them some predictive power lacking in the rest of us mere mortals. Journalism is not only about reporting what is happening, but is also about the answer to the question on everyone’s lips: What will happen next? It’s not for nothing The McLaughlin Group ends each show with the Group’s predictions. This is what viewers are most interested in, far more than the moral pronouncements of the talking heads, and the transcript makes it crystal-clear that this is the context in which Pat’s comments appeared:

John McLaughlin: “Pat Buchanan, is the assault on Najaf, including the bombing of al-Sadr’s residence, as we see it here, a good call or a bad call?”

Pat Buchanan: “It is a necessary call, John. Allawi tried to bring al-Sadr into the process by offering virtual amnesty to him. We have left them alone. They continue to do battle. What you’ve got now is a strategic sanctuary in Fallujah and one in Najaf. And Allawi’s made this tough call, and the Americans agree with it. They’re going to take the risks attendant to it and go in and finish this guy off. I think, militarily and strategically, it is a tremendously risky decision. I think it’s a necessary decision and the right decision.”

The subject was Iyad Allawi: will he survive? What will he do about Moqtada al-Sadr? The decision to go in is “necessary” and “the right decision,” as Pat said, given the administration’s policy. But since these shows are basically a conversation, and the conversation wasn’t about the rightness or wrongness of the policy, Tucker’s interpretation of what was said is based on a very selective and fatally flawed hearing of what really went on in this segment.

Tucker avers that Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift gave the “right” answer, but he neglects to notice Pat’s concurrence with Clift:

“There’s tremendous risks attendant. Eleanor’s right. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a great risk. This could explode. You could lose the Shi’as. But Tony [Blankley] is right in this sense. If you do not eliminate these two sanctuaries, Fallujah and Najaf, you are going to lose the war. That is what they’re playing with right now, and they’ve rolled the dice. And, no, we don’t know how it’s going to come out.”

Here Pat is clearly in his analytical mode: this, after all, is what journalists do.

If Tucker’s misinterpretation of what Buchanan meant seems oddly … deliberate – I mean, why is he cherry-picking his way through the transcript for evidence of heresy? – well, it is. In his LRC blog entry, Tucker refers (and links) to a piece he wrote recently about how conservatives – all conservatives – are somehow inherently militaristic:

This is conservatism. There’s no use in denying it. The war party and American conservatism are interchangeable and inseparable. They are synonyms. The same thing. They co-exist. How many ways can we put it? Militarism and violence is at the core of conservatism.

Some protest that conservatism once meant resistance to the welfare-warfare state. That is a fascinating piece of historiography, as interesting as the fact that liberalism once meant freedom from the state. Glasses were once called spectacles too, but in our times, language has it own meaning.

A key concept held in common by Tucker and the neocons: “in our times, language has its own meaning” – and history is “interesting,” but all this talk about the Old Right is bunk. I’m sure David Frum would agree. And isn’t it odd, but here’s another Tuckerite-Frummian convergence: they’re the only two people (so far) who are attacking Pat’s excellent book (and the author) in truly vicious terms. It’s incredible that Tucker actually has the nerve to imply that Buchanan is actually a pro-war mole sent into the antiwar camp to somehow rationalize the assault on Najaf: “perhaps that is the role that Pat is supposed to play” rants Tucker. And just whose orders is Pat following, Jeff? You really ought to lay off the Kool-Aid.

The important point here is that Tucker is simply wrong – and in a way that is injurious to the antiwar cause, and to the libertarian movement. Because there is indeed a flourishing revival of the Old Right: The American Conservative, Chronicles magazine, and lots of independent thinkers on the Right side of the political spectrum who despise the neocons, imperialism, and the Welfare-Warfare State. Thousands of conservative rank-and-filers, especially young people, are questioning neoconservative orthodoxy and discovering the suppressed anti-imperialist legacy of the Old Right. To assail these people as insufficiently pure is sectarian nonsense. David Frum wants these people to just go away, and so, apparently, does Jeff Tucker.