These are the kinds of discussions we could be having. Instead, what Dana Milbank offers us is the following:
Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet.
--snip--
Obama had become to his youthful supporters a vessel for all of their liberal hopes. They saw him as a transformational figure who would end war, save the Earth from global warming, restore the economy -- and still be home for dinner.
This kind of piffle is one reason our politics is so broken; mindless jibber-jabber such as this, offered in one of the most important newspapers in the country, sucks far too much intelligence and thought from any discussion. Rather than discuss the issue of our policy in Afghanistan, we have to spend time pointing out that the entire premise of this column is flawed; that Milbank offers nothing in the way of actual evidence that there ever was a "Church of Obama", that his "followers" thought he could save the earth before sundown. This is typical, mindless, small-town gossip offered as serious political commentary.
This isn't public discourse so much as it is a church-lady wagging her finger (I know Milbank is a man, but just run with the pronoun, OK?) at someone who got too puffed up, too big for his britches, and is now being brought down a peg or two. Milbank is quite happy that Obama is facing opposition not because of any of the merits or demerits of his decision on Afghanistan - you never get the sense, reading this column, that Milbank has an opinion, or even any understanding of the issue - but because Milbank is a self-appointed guardian of our political class. Obama, young, brash, and black, has managed to remain popular during the first year of his Presidency even as the pundits fretted about all the things they have always fretted about. Even as Obama seemed to spurn their advice, and ignore their columns, and did all the things they said couldn't and shouldn't be done, he has remained popular.
These pundits are far less serious, thoughtful people with one eye on the national interest and the other on the costs and benefits of any policy. They are that gaggle of old men and women who sit around the local diner, drinking cup after cup of coffee, ordering pie while they wink at the waitress, and believe, without any evidence whatsoever, that their views are important, their voices ought to be heeded, and that their inclusion of personal gossip is a necessary adjunct to discussing questions of real merit.
From this moment on, I rescind my own self-imposed decision not to resort to the short-hand used by some of referring to Washington insider journalism as "the Village". Milbank's column today is a wonderful distillation of the kind of small-town nonsense that is making it almost impossible to talk about questions of import with anything resembling intelligence. If Washington is, indeed, a Village, today, Milbank showed us who the village idiot is.
