I've said it before (here and here), Michael Kinsley USED to be one of my favorite liberal columnists but his content over the past 2-3 years has been just CRAP.   His most recent column critiquing Bush's Democracy speech (a work that Fareed Zakaria, Daniel Drezner, and I consider to be among Bush's best) reveals his seething, frothing liberal bile in naked glory. 

I asked:

...is there any doubt how deeply he [Bush] believes in these principles?

Fareed Zakaria stated:

A visceral dislike for the president is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they cannot bring themselves to agree with anything he says. How else to explain the churlish reaction among so many Democrats, Europeans and intellectuals to the president’s speech on democracy in the Middle East last week? Whatever the problems—and I'll get to them—as a speech it stands as one of the most intelligent and eloquent statements by a president in recent memory.

And like clockwork, in walks Michael Kinsley with the headline:  The Limits of Eloquence:  Did Bush mean a word of his speech about democracy?.   Kinsley calls to task the difference between Candidate Bush and President Bush in their foreign policy orientation (something I've blogged about before):

One way to show your respect for democracy is to state your beliefs when running for office and then apply those same beliefs when you're elected. Democracy becomes pointless if there is no connection between the policies that citizens think they are voting for and the policies they get. In this case we actually do seem to have the policies that a majority of voters thought they were supporting. But we cannot count on election theft and broken promises to cancel each other out every time.

Nevertheless, it can be quite noble for a politician to change his or her mind. It can demonstrate courage, integrity, open-mindedness. Has Bush changed his mind on America's role in the world? Or is it all just words—was there no mind to change?

9/11 changed a lot of minds.   Mine included.  Kinsley has managed to somehow pen an entire missive about the Bush presidency and foreign policy while leaving out this little turning point in history.   His intellectual shoddiness here is just plain sad.

One can only imagine how acidic Kinsley's words would be had Bush NOT changed his policy tune as a result of 9/11.   The speech was so on-target that the only way left for Kinsley to attack it is to simply say that Bush is too stupid / conniving to believe the words coming out of his own mouth.   Kinsley's partisan loathing is so transparent and such a powerful filter on everything he sees it scares me.   I can disagree with people but still respect them and I'm fast losing the latter for him.

Thankfully, to save me from spending too much time trying to diagnose him, Kinsley Freudian-ly reveals the historical roots of his anger and frustration:

George W. Bush's powers of persuasion are apparently so spectacular, at least to some, that almost all the pro-Bush voices in Washington and the media have remained pro-Bush even when "pro-Bush" means the opposite of what it did five minutes ago. The Comintern at the height of its powers, in the 1930s, couldn't have engineered a more impressive U-turn. If places like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page had been as enthusiastic about nation-building back in 2000 as they are now, Al Gore might be president today.

Wait a minute. Maybe he is.

That's right.  Gore was supposed to win.   Bush is Evil.   Case closed and mind shut.   What a dufus.

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