Thomas Friedman, Frank Rich and God-Knows-What

The New York Times' editorial policy of hogging all the endorsement power leaves its political columnists with (to this reader, at least) interesting choices, and yesterday, once again, was an interesting case in divergence of style.

For instance there was Tom Friedman, using the presidential contest as a springboard to address the dire economic situation in America. Credit is drying up even for the credit-worthy, banks are collapsing, the cost of living is skyrocketing, consumer confidence is fleeing, unemployment is mounting, manufacturing -- we still manufacture? -- is "creeping down," and our government is doing nothing to encourage the development of independent, clean and renewable energy, observed Friedman.

Having defined the assorted elements of what is in fact a serious economic tailspin, Friedman then warned that our present situation "could become" ... brace yourself ... "a serious economic tailspin." It's the power of logic.

Anyway, Friedman was then stuck because of his paper's aforementioned hogging: "It’s the state of America now," he wrote, "that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not Al Qaeda or Iraq.... We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started." His advice? "Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best."

That rather truncated exhortation was, I suppose, merely one of those resulting oddities of an editorial policy that permits a columnist to explicitly beat the drums of a vastly ill-advised war, but muzzles the poor prophet on matters of domestic leadership. In view of Friedman's track record, perhaps that's for the best. Nevertheless, it seems downright weird.

On yesterday's page along with Friedman, however, was the self-liberating Frank Rich -- to my mind the most accomplished political columnist alive. I also describe him as "self-liberating" because Mr. Rich consistently snubs and happily abuses his paper's editorial policy, up to and including the point of rendering it pointless. And that throws the policy itself into question, which, I should note, given my rather untethered meanderings, is at least one partial point of this morning's musings.

Yet parenthetically the once-rabidly prowar Friedman and always-rabidly antiwar Rich were in agreement on one thing. Wrote the former: "Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card -- one way or another -- is, in my view, seriously deluded."

And the latter: "Should there be no new terrorist attack, the McCain camp’s efforts to play the old Rove 9/11 fear card may quickly become as laughable as the Giuliani presidential campaign. These days Americans are more frightened of losing their jobs, homes and savings," per Friedman's emphatic analysis.

I, along with 300 million others, couldn't agree more. Where I part with Rich, however, is right after his laying out of the alternative scenario: "If a terrorist bomb did detonate in an American city before Election Day, would that automatically be to the Republican ticket’s benefit?"

"Not necessarily," argues Rich, principally because voters might blame George Bush, or they might even then take a closer look at John McCain's hapless foreign policy team, which uniformly urged in 2002 our diversion of counterterrorism efforts from Afghanistan to Iraq (where, of course, there was no terrorism threat).

Rich gives the electorate much more credit than I. For I'll never forget -- "vivid" recollections these things are always called, for reasons unknown -- reading some man-on-the-street survey results in the 1990s, one of which was breathtakingly, depressingly revealing. The question: "Who's the vice president of the United States?" The answer: Well, about half didn't know.

Does Rich genuinely believe that these same folks would be willing to delve into the personal intellectual histories of McCain's truly, by comparison, obscure advisers, as he did in his column? -- e.g. Iraq-rose-pedal liberator Randy Scheunemann and Chalabi-"cheerleader" James Woolsey?

No way. Or no friggin way, to put it in professional poli-sci speak. Why, they'd simply and automatically run for the hills -- the familiar, comforting, reassuring hills of Republican militarism as the Great Mole-Whacker. Of that, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind.

Well, I have meandered indeed, from the gnat to the mammoth, from the NY Times' editorial policy to America's recidivist character. If you can find a common theme in all this, then congratulations, because I sure don't know what it is. Sometimes that happens.