Moment, Linger On: Intellectual dishonesty explained

Every once in a while I mosey over to Tacitus to see what conservatives have to say about the world and their place in it. I go to his site because he is often moderately decent and almost honest, which is a trait that you won't see in many other conservatives in the blogosphere. Still, he frequently has a streak running through his posts which can be attributed only to gross ignorance or blatant intellectual dishonesty. A compulsion to be charitable would cause me to lean towards the former, but the truth is that they are usually indistinguishable from each other.

Today he writes about how he convinces himself to maintain his loyalty to the Bush administration in the light of their stupendous mismanagement of the Iraq campaign. He does so, of course, by claiming that Kerry would do far worse. This is a debatable point, of course. It is beside the point that I disagree, though, because I think that for Tacitus this isn't the real issue anyway.

He alludes to what is possibly the real reason in his post when he discusses the loyalty demanded of members of the Bush administration:

Administration, but I do know the inner workings of a few small non-Defense parts of it. In my experience, when you hit the senior levels, or the levels at which political appointees operate, loyalty is too frequently elevated to an end in itself. Two illustrative stories spring to mind, both of new hires gone bad. The first tale, anecdotal and hence possibly untrue, concerns a woman accepted as a Schedule C political appointee by her prospective workplace. The White House personnel office, alas, found that she'd written a letter to her hometown paper suggesting regret at McCain's failure to secure the GOP nomination -- in October 2000. Offer withdrawn. The second tale, assuredly true, concerns a young man who was also accepted by his workplace for a Schedule C position. Once again, the White House personnel office to the rescue: the young fellow foolishly revealed that he failed to vote in 2000. If you're not with us: offer withdrawn. Thus did the Administration lose two well-qualified Republicans (okay, at least one) who considered themselves Bush supporters to an absurdly exaggerated ideal of total fidelity. (Curiously, White House personnel never dug up my late November 2000 e-mail to the Bush campaign urging a level-headed cooldown in Florida for the good of the country. Pretty sure that would have sunk me.) (emphasis mine)

Take a look at that last parenthetical comment. Unless I am misreading what he wrote, Tacitus is admitting that he is a schedule C employee. That is, he is a political appointee who serves more or less at the discretion of the administration and who stands to lose his job if Kerry is elected. Think about that one the next time you read one of his posts where he criticizes Kerry and ask yourself whether he is truly being honest about why he says what he does or whether he just cares about keeping his gig for the next four years.

Comments

And, in or near that post, he stated that all participants in an anti-war march organized by ANSWER were responsible for endorsing ANSWER.

Since Tacitus is a pair political employee of the administration, what does that make him?

In the end, Tacitus isn't very honest; he just has enough self-honesty to realize that reality does exist, and can't totally be spun away. That's why he's worried about the war in Iraq. He's a fanatical jinogist, but hasn't yet filed for a divorce from reality.

Posted by: Barry | May 15, 2004 at 05:50 PM