The owners of the Washington Post Co. are cautious, perhaps to a fault, and have long ago abandoned the idea of spinning out a national edition that would compete with The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The Graham family is content with its stranglehold on the DC metropolitan region—its penetration in the area remains phenomenal and the paper, unlike the Times, faces no serious local competition—and in at the very least a temporarily perilous market for “dead tree” products, is unwilling to take expensive risks. The burden of publishing Newsweek, like its equally touchy-feely and irrelevant rival Time, is also considerable.
Nevertheless, the company is far from bankrupt and if there’s anyone with vision who has a voice at shareholder meetings, he or she might suggest a zoned edition in Manhattan in an attempt to siphon off Times readers. Such a project isn’t so farfetched; not only would it be payback for the way Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. screwed the Post on its partnership in the The International Herald Tribune, but far more significantly there’s an audience in New York for a traditionally liberal broadsheet now that the Times has embraced an hysterical left-wing stance.
Last Sunday, both papers printed editorials about CT Sen. Joe Lieberman’s difficult August 8 primary race against a political neophyte, multimillionaire Ned Lamont, a comet who’s become the sweetheart de jour of the radical left. The Times endorsed Lamont because he’s a virulent critic of President Bush and the Iraq war, which, in its view, trumps every other issue, domestic and international, in the midterm elections this fall. Connecticut’s Republican party has conceded the senate race to a Democrat, offering an unelectable candidate, so conservatives aren’t really involved in the internecine fight, relegated to spectator status. But it’s an example of how far the Times has strayed from its “paper of record” mantle—a moniker earned for nearly a hundred years of relative diligence until Sulzberger Jr., aided by Howell Raines and Gail Collins indulged themselves in self-defeating and pious partisanship.
When the Times editorial was posted on Lucianne.com, a conservative Internet site that links to articles of every political opinion and then lets readers add its comments, one person said, “No surprise here. The long-haired, maggot infested, Kos-kissing, ‘progressive’ editorial board members are making their daily contribution to the eventual total destruction of the Democratic Party.” I’ve no idea if Sulzberger and his effete colleagues have long or short hair—my bet is they’re extremely well-groomed, and customers at the kind of beauty salons and boutiques that the vast majority of their readers can’t afford—but it is true that the Times isn’t helping Democrats.
The editorial is unusually harsh about a man who, pre-Iraq, was once a favorite. “It’s true that Mr. Lieberman has fallen in love with his image as the nation’s moral compass,” the writer says, “But if pomposity were a disqualification, the Senate would never be able to call a quorum.” Hard to argue with that assertion, although it’d be informative if the Times revealed the names of other senators it considers pompous.
A fair list would of course include Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel; and, aside from politicians, probably 75 percent of the op-ed columnists in the Beltway media. But that wasn’t the Times’ mission in its attempt to influence voters; it was to rid the Senate of a man who consistently votes liberal on most issues, including taxation, abortion and the environment. I’d include Lieberman’s courageous and consistent defense of Israel as well, but that also doesn’t square with Sulzberger’s position, which, inexplicably, puts America’s strongest ally in the same category as the Mideast butchers who’d like to destroy the tiny country.
The Post, on the other hand, takes a far more pragmatic yet principled stand, choosing Lieberman over Lamont, a man the editorial correctly acknowledges is “entitled to run an antiwar campaign and pour last-minute millions from his personal fortune into the race.” (It’s telling that the Times, a champion of ridding big money from politics, except when it interferes with its agenda, hardly mentions Lamont’s wealth.)
It’s crucial, according to the Post, to retain a veteran who’s reliably liberal on most issues and willing to compromise at times with Republicans, much as John McCain does with Democrats. The paper concludes: “This [bipartisanship] is a talent and temperament that is helpful to the Democrats in the minority but will be needed even more if there’s a change in power in one or both houses of Congress or, in 2008, in the White House. Then, more than ever, the Democratic Party, if it hopes to accomplish anything, will need people such as Mr. Lieberman who brings some civility to an increasingly uncivil capital—who can accept the idea that opponents may disagree in good faith and who can then work to find areas of agreement and assemble working majorities of 60 senators. His ability to do so is a strength, not a weakness, for the party as well as the nation.”
It’s not a stretch to argue that a sizable amount of the Times’ politically aware readership favors the Post’s opinion. As Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, in an August 7 column points out, “The challenge facing voters this year is not to hold Democrats responsible for their heresies but Republicans accountable for where they have taken the country. They are the ones in power, not Joe Lieberman.”
Alter, who despises Bush and calls the Iraq war a “fiasco,” fears that a Lieberman defeat by “ideologically pure” Democrats, who sat on their hands in 1968 and “gave the world Richard Nixon,” will damage its hope for a Congressional takeover and 2008 White House win. You’d think the Times would agree, but the paper is so blinkered by its hatred of Bush that it prefers immediate satisfaction rather than long-term results.
Suits me fine: If the Democrats want to blow their best opportunity in years to control Congress, that’s a positive for the country. Why doesn’t Sulzberger understand that?
