Neoconmen

Just to add my voice to the chorus, I’ll agree that Wolfowitz’s retreat on the issue of al Qaeda terrorists crawling all over Iraq is a media tactic.

I’ve told the story before, but I’ll repeat it here (because, well…why not?)

When I was volunteering for the Clinton campaign in 1992, I happened to find myself alone with a very high level campaign strategist one night. I was gloating about the fact that Mary Matalin had had to apologize that day for a misstatement she’d made about our candidate.

This operative just shook his head and said, “Yeah, but she got it out there, didn’t she?”

Since then, I have expected this kind of thing coming from campaign strategists, operatives and party tools. And both sides do it to some extent. It’s their job to manipulate the media and it’s a comment on the total incompetence of that media that they can get away with it.

But, until now there was a dividing line between those people and policy wonks whose reputation rested on their professional integrity. They simply didn’t do this kind of thing for purely political purposes. Brad De Long has discussed this in terms of the economic advisors as did John DiUllio in his infamous Esquire article.

It’s true that in the foreign policy realm, there have been many examples of wonks floating untruths for the purpose of leading the press in certain directions for policy reasons. But, this complete merging of domestic politics and policy among the professionals is, if not unprecedented, extremely unusual.

Wolfowitz, by showing his true stripes these last couple of weeks, finally and completely reveals that he is not the high minded neocon visionary that everyone assumed. He’s a political hack.

In fact, it is beginning to become pretty obvious that the entire neocon movement isn’t an intellectual undertaking at all. It’s just another GOP con game.