Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

[zipplewrath]

56. Focusing on his dumbest critics

Conor Friedersdorf has a different point of view

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/dear-andrew-sullivan-why-focus-on-obamas-dumbest-critics/251528/

But his Newsweek essay fits the pattern I've lamented of Obama apologists who tell a narrative of his administration that ignores some of these issues and minimizes the importance of others, as if they're a relatively unimportant matter to be set aside in a sentence or three before proceeding to the more important business of whether the president is being critiqued fairly by obtuse partisans.

Sullivan should reconsider this approach.

During President Bush's first term, Sullivan will recall the most unhinged attacks on him -- the comparisons to Hitler, the puppets burned in effigy, the comparisons to a chimp. There wasn't anything wrong with lamenting those attacks, just as there's nothing wrong with pointing out exaggerated and baseless attacks on Obama, which have spread through most of the Republican Party. But the priority put on rebutting the least persuasive left-wing critiques of Bush, and pre-election 2004 worrying about the flaws of the Democratic field, are part of what postponed the backlash against Bush's ruinous policies. The backlash should've been the priority all along.