David Brooks draws back the curtain, briefly:

Deep in the bowels of Washington, hidden from public scrutiny and prying cameras, there is an illicit underworld where people are subtle, reasonable and interesting. I have occasionally been admitted to this place, the land of RIP (Reasonable in Private).

I have been in the Senate dining room and heard senators, in whispers and with furtive glances, acknowledge the weaknesses in their own arguments and admit the justice of some of the other side’s points. I have seen politicians fess up to their own evasions and acknowledge the trade-offs inevitable in tough decisions.

I have always felt honored when politicians admit me into the realm of RIP, because if it ever got out that these pols were sensible and independent, it would ruin their careers. If it ever got out that they could think for themselves or often had subversive and honest thoughts, they would be branded traitors to their party and uncertain champions for their cause.

Um, David, does it not occur to you that having these secret conversations makes you part of the problem? That you are doing your readers a grave disservice by knowing the actual views of their elected officials and not sharing that knowledge? I mean, it’s all very nice that you can brag to your readers that you’re a member of the very kewlest club, but don’t you see that it’s not really your job to be in kewl clubs?

It’s your job to write about what really goes on in Washington. You've picked a particularly poor time to be pointing this out, because we’re finding lots and lots about Irving Libby’s kewl kids club.

In our democracy, presidential aspirants spend a few months fighting a general election but two years positioning themselves for the primaries. That means they spend the bulk of their time in transcontinental cattle calls, competing to most assiduously flatter the prejudices of their most febrile supporters. They traffic in pre-approved bromides while searching with their hyperattenuated antennas for their party’s maximum sweet spot of approval, love and applause.

[snip]

And yet the politicians have completely failed to institutionalize that sense of sobriety in the public sphere. Instead of having a serious debate, the Senate disgraced itself with mind-bendingly petty partisanship. Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates engaged in an unholy bidding war to get out of Iraq soonest, which had nothing to do with realities in Iraq and everything to do with applause lines in Iowa.

Right. Taking a position supported by two thirds of the American people is pandering to the voters in Iowa. And which candidates is he talking about? Clinton, parroting republican talking points on Fox TV? The strongest position on the war comes from Senator Feingold, not from anyone in the Presidential race.

This also reminds me of a recent WaPo chat with

Shailagh Murray:

Would you want a department store manager or orthodontist running the Pentagon? I don't think so. The reason that many politicians are squeamish about hard and fast goals of any kind in Iraq is that there is no simple response or solution -- it would have emerged by now. A withdrawal by year's end carries enormous, very serious implications.

The people can’t have role in any decision that carries very serious implications. No, this is a job for Senators and their media contacts to work out behind closed doors, while collaborating to present politicians’ false public image. Note that we’ve moved on from the DFH to the entire American populace outside the Beltway. Mere voters can’t have a voice, because they don’t get into these special, secret conversations that Brooks and Murray do.

All they know about is the material served to them, by Brooks and his ilk, on a platter like a fake turkey in Baghdad.

Back to Brooks

In a week when the private mood was grave, the public action was partisan and shortsighted. Instead of trying to educate public opinion by stressing the realities described in the National Intelligence Estimate, the political class, by and large, publicly ignored those findings. The Republicans maintained near lock-step solidarity even though privately, Republican opinions are all over the place.

David sees his job as telling us that the majority of republicans are lying, but not his job to tell us which ones these are. It’s his job to assist them in stifling debate and preventing the public from knowing what their elected officials think.

David, do you really not see that even if you are not part of the political class (I think you are, as Cheney’s opinion of Meet the Press as messenger service indicates), you are at the very least enabling the atmosphere you are deriding here. Again, isn’t it your frickin’ job to tell us what these lines of debate are? Even if it’s all hush, hush and on the QT or you’re out of the club, can’t you at least report numbers and positions, if not names? (ed—in point of fact, he can’t because his interpretation of his job is transmitting the official republican message that he’s decrying the existence of.)

The Democrats ignored the intelligence community’s warning about withdrawal after spending three years blasting the Bush administration for ignoring intelligence.

Yeah, and why has the media also ignored it? It’s the elephant in the living room. The real debate is not whether bad things will happen when the US leaves. It is 1) whether the US remaining indefinitely will do anything but delay the bad things until US casualty figures become as intolerable to Senators as they already are to orthodontists and department store managers.

It is also 2) whether the US presence is making the bad things that will happen still worse by increasing the sectarian division and hatred, as the Iranian ambassador suggests in a very lucid column next to his.

It’s certainly true that we need to have that debate. You’d do your readers a greater service by advancing that debate in public, rather than whispering about in his secret club.