Time to Close the Books

I feel like it's safe to say that now that Michael O'Hanlon is following up last week's Washington Times op-ed with a column for National Review Online and an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show that he's cast himself out of the broad left-of-center community in favor of becoming a conservative movement propagandist whose salary just happens to be paid by Brookings.

This, however, makes the Michael O'Hanlon Primary all the more pressing. The word on the street in 2004 was that O'Hanlon was in line for some kind of job in a John Kerry administration. This time around, in a Fox News appearance O'Hanlon expressed his support for Hillary Clinton. Does Clinton return the admiration?

Comments

OTOH, O'Hanlon has a good grasp of the italics tag.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 10, 2007 11:31 AM

Seems things have taken a slant to the right around here.

Posted by JJF | September 10, 2007 11:34 AM

SCMT: brilliant!

on a serious note, i don't keep up with the serious person scorecard: has o'hanlon ever deserved a good reputation?

Posted by howard | September 10, 2007 11:35 AM

Time to Close the Italics?

Posted by southpaw | September 10, 2007 11:53 AM

Well the broad left-of-center has demonized him for saying things that don't agree with their preconceived notions about Iraq.

You guys forced his hand, pretty much.

Posted by Ken McCracken | September 10, 2007 11:54 AM

Runaway italics! The whole page is full of them.

Posted by PartisanJ | September 10, 2007 11:56 AM

Well the broad left-of-center has demonized him for saying things that don't agree with their preconceived notions about Iraq. are completely wrong.

Posted by yeah | September 10, 2007 12:06 PM

MATT: the close italics tag belongs at the end of this snippet:

"I feel like it's safe to say that now that Michael O'Hanlon is following up last week's Washington Times op-ed with a column for National Review Online[close tag]...."

Posted by JimPortlandOR | September 10, 2007 12:08 PM

You're welcome?

Posted by Johnny | September 10, 2007 12:11 PM

Testing.

Posted by Anonymous | September 10, 2007 12:23 PM

for the love of God, somebody do something before this thing infects the entire intertubes!

Posted by live | September 10, 2007 12:24 PM

"Well the broad left-of-center has demonized him for saying things that don't agree with their preconceived notions about Iraq."

Assessment of a situation based on empirical observation of facts on the ground doesn't count as "preconceived notions." If you want preconceived notions about Iraq, you need to bark up the tree of the Bush administration.

Posted by er | September 10, 2007 12:27 PM

does Hillary return the admiration? sure she does. O'Hanlon favors the surge. Hillary's spoken highly of the surge. everyone's happy. not least of all the NeoCons.

Posted by scorpio | September 10, 2007 12:32 PM

Talk about a guy who has taken the "useful idiot" role and run with it. He needs to be read out of respectable company on the Democratic side of the aisle. He has become chief propagandist and enabler for this ill-considered policy and given as much cover as he possibly could to the administration.

Any of the Democratic candidates should indicate that he will enter the White House only by getting in line with the tourists.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | September 10, 2007 12:59 PM

The O'Hanlon referendum will never take place. There is no benefit to it. Hilary Clinton wouldn't gain an ounce of credibility by denouncing O'hanlon, who is (face it) unknown to most of the population. She might send a signal to D.C. insiders, but ... why should she? The signal she has sent, the one that has suddenly made the Washington Post editorial page comfortable with her, is precisely that she won't denounce such as O'Hanlon. If there is a O'Hanlon referendum, I'd say Clinton is winning it.

Because the serious people are wrong, frivolous in their analysis, inside traders in fraudulent information, advocates of psychotic aggression, and drivers behind the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, one can too hastily assume they have lost some modicum of power. But they haven't. The same idiots are in the drivers seat. The Dems would rather watch their support melt significantly away, as it has done in the polls since they allowed Bush his 3 billion dollar a week allowance for Iraq, then change course. So: why assume that they want to change course?

Posted by roger | September 10, 2007 1:33 PM

From The Corner:

Chef Petraeus [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From Daily Kos:

Funniest bit of the day? The right-wing freaking out at suggestions that Petraeus might be "cooking the books for the White House". As if that obvious fact is even debatable.

Michael O'Hanlon must be a right-winger. News to him and Brookings, I'd imagine.

Posted by ethan | September 10, 2007 3:51 PM

Ethan,

I don't think I understand your comment.

Are you suggesting that it is absurd that someone from Brookings would shill for the right wing? Because O'Hanlon's done a pretty impressive job of that. In any sane universe his credibility would be zero and he would be deemed a pariah by anyone with a shred of morality.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | September 10, 2007 4:02 PM

I certainly think O'Hanlon is a shill.

It was amusing for me to find, however, that the pathetics over at The Corner haven't yet noticed that O'Hanlon's been totally and completely discredited, regardless of his institutional beard.

That post by Lopez was from today.

That's all.

Posted by ethan | September 10, 2007 5:31 PM

O'Hanlon knows that Bush will keep the occupation going and push it off on the Dems to end as this is their strategy to win back the WH in 2012...blame the dems for all problems associated with straightening out Bush's mess.. O'Hanlon wants to get an inside seat with Dems so he will be on board in 2012 to get a good position with the repubs as an insider telling the truth about those incompetent Dems.
Dema claim it is Bush's war but will not do what is necessary to force him to end it or to begin withdrawing the troops which Bush doesn't have a clue as to how to do that.
Why would anyone ever say that O'Hanlon was ever a war critic or liberal leaning. Greenwald's take on him will last a lifetime. O'Hanlon will never live down being a phony with a price tag.

Posted by bjobotts | September 10, 2007 6:23 PM

O'Hanlon will we welcomed with open arms by the far-right. After all they have a soft spot for paradoxical people: anti-gay gays (e.g., Craig, Foley, Haggard), anti-black blacks (e.g., Thomas), anti-Dem Dems (Zell Miller, etc.). An anti-Liberal Liberal will fit right in.

Posted by What would Zeus do? | September 11, 2007 2:44 PM