Economist 1: Kristol 0

Did that SNL skit give a wake-up call to the media to start being more hard on Obama, especially after Hillary's snarky "pillow" comment in the CA debates? William Kristol's column today was one attempt at aiming the barrel at the Obama camp, but this lowball ended up backfiring in his face. Basically Kristol went on about the fact that Obama had wilfully played down his presence at the [blatantly racist] Rev. Wright's speech on July 22, making him somehow a "deceitful" and complicit politician. Kristol's overblown climax for his column is to declare this symptomatic of Obama's ongoing deceit, that this crowing about a new kind of politics was just hot air.

Is that so? Uh, well, actually,

The Obama campaign has provided information showing that Sen. Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.

It's certainly the first time I've seen a correction appended to the beginning of the article rather than tagged sheepishly to the end. This must be the editor's halfhearted way of apologizing for a serious lapse in editorial judgment in which facts were not factchecked, opinions were polemicized and mud was flung:

The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.

Well, Kristol wanted to talk about deceit and conceit, but the crux upon which his entire piece was based was promptly debunked because it simply was not true. Who's the conceited deceiver now? The Economist, that bastion of skeptical snarkiness, posted this great response ripping apart Kristol not only for his flawed argument, but also for his "characteristically hackneyed" prose. Referring to the paragraph in question:

But the second thought doesn't necessarily flow from the first; the latter, indeed, rests on the sly and insulting mischaracterisation of Mr Obama's supporters as a bunch of lefty naifs. Barack Obama is a politician running for political office. Surely many of his supporters simply prefer him to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. They're voting for him not because he's a messiah or a saviour, but for the oldest and most basic democratic reason: he's better than the other guy (gender-neutral "guy", of course).

I love it when good old common sense kicks in. But then again, I'm loathe to say that the only reason that anyone supports Obama is simply because he's the better of three evils. Now John Kerry may have been a douche bag but I votedforhimanyway.com, but Obama really is a politician I can rally around--not just because of pure rhetoric, but because of character. Dreams of My Father is a really good read. I have to say that I respect him so much more now that I know he's a good writer!