Ezra Klein Gets Snookered (re: Paul Ryan)

[marmar]

from OpenLeft:




Ezra Klein sets up the marks for Paul Ryan

by: Paul Rosenberg
Sun Aug 08, 2010 at 16:00


Brad DeLong sez:

Methinks Ezra Klein Gets Snookered...

Ezra Klein likes Paul Ryan. Methinks that this is the first time Ezra has run into a charming and personable Republican selling deficit-exploding plans as deficit reducing ones.

But some of us have seen this story many times before...

This is yet another--if somewhat milder--example of the sensible center critiquing the "sensible center". As DeLong implies, there's nothing new here. In fact, it's just another incarnation of Lucy with the football. But the really annoying part is when Ezra gets all superior to those like DeLong (hey, I'm staying out of it as much as I possibly can, while not staying out of it all!) who've actually got a handle on what's going on:

And now let's get to the paragraph a lot of you will flay me for: I don't think Ryan is a charlatan or a flim-flam artist. More to the point, I think he's playing an important role, and one I'm happy to try and help him play: The worlds of liberals and conservatives are increasingly closed loops. Very few politicians from one side are willing to seriously engage with the other side, particularly on substance. Substance is scary. Substance is where you can be made to look bad. And substance has occasionally made Ryan look bad. But the willingness to engage has made him look good. It's given some people the information they need to decide him a charlatan, and others the information they need to decide him a bright spot. It's also given Ryan a much deeper understanding of liberal ideas than most conservative politicians have.

So do Ryan's arguments persuade me? Not as far as the Roadmap goes. But I'm glad to give him space to try to persuade all of you, so long as he's willing to let me try and poke holes in his arguments while he's doing it. That's an offer I've extended to every legislator interested in taking me up on it, and it still stands.

Ah, where to begin? Ezra's smug superiority? Or the part where Lucy pulls away the football, and Ezra lands flat on his ass? Or the part where Ezra totally misses the point of everything?

Substance is scary. Substance is where you can be made to look bad. And substance has occasionally made Ryan look bad. But the willingness to engage has made him look good.

Memo To Ezra: Looking good is the only game that Ryan's playing. By saying what you've just said, you've made yourself Ryan's bitch. That's the beginning, middle and end of the story.

And this:

It's given some people the information they need to decide him a charlatan, and others the information they need to decide him a bright spot. It's also given Ryan a much deeper understanding of liberal ideas than most conservative politicians have.

is the same sort of standard-less standard that's standard operating proceedure for making the Obama Administration such a staggering disappointment. (Since most conservative politicians understand liberal ideas about as well as meerkats understand quantum physics, I'm not terribly impressed that Ryan understands them as well as orangutangs understand quantum physics.)

Bottom line: Ezra suffers from the age-old liberal disease of thinking that conservatives are just liberals with a different set of policy preferences. They're not: They come from an entirely different culture: a pre-modern culture of warriors and priests. Not surprisingly, their only interest in ideas is as weapons.

It's one thing for Ezra to be taken in by Ryan's con. But he's actually doing much, much more: by legitimizing Ryan the way he does, he's actually participating in Ryan's con.

Despite--or perhaps because of--all his education and intelligence, Ezra really doesn't get that Ryan is offering excuses, rather than reasons, for doing things that any reasonably smart 13-year old can see are utterly catastrophic.

That is, any reasonably smart 13-year old that doesn't already want to be Paul Ryan or Ezra Klein when they grow up.


http://www.openleft.com/diary/19741/ezra-klein-sets-up-the-marks-for-paul-ryan