Labour's hapless leader has picked up another endorsement, this time from NY Times' Tom Friedman, a man fond of globalization, Cinnabon, product placement, and now, Tony Blair.
Link: Op-Ed Columnist: Sizzle, Yes, but Beef, Too.
New York Times columnists are not allowed to endorse U.S. presidential candidates. Only the editorial page does that. But in checking the columnist rule book, I couldn't find any ban on endorsing a candidate for prime minister of Britain. So I'm officially rooting for Tony Blair.
I've never met Mr. Blair. But reading the British press, it strikes me that he's not much loved by Fleet Street. He's not much loved by the left wing of his own Labor Party either, and he certainly doesn't have any supporters on the Conservative benches. Yet he seems to be heading for re-election to a third term on May 5.
Aside from the fact you should never go about endorsing a candidate when you can't even spell the name of their party, Tom Friedman makes the mistake of assuming Labour might win because of Tony Blair, rather than in spite of. As I observed earlier, Tony is loathed here, sort of the way Tom Friedman is loathed by the left in America. When someone who ought to know better consistently doesn't, and then uses a hard-earned bully pulpit to press their ill-conceived notions of globalization and non-existent WMDs upon an unsuspecting public, the reaction is similar to Matt Taibbi's in the NY Press:
This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.
The fact is, Labour will win, (despite the fact the LibDems will surely gain votes this time round) but it has more to do with the hope among their voters that Gordon Brown will take over in the not too distant future. So maybe Mr. Friedman is cozying up to the wrong British politician.
Worst of all, he'd like American Democrats to emulate Tony Blair, perhaps find a clone to run in 2008, mainly because he thinks Tony Blair shares his cockeyed views on globalization and wars of naked aggression. In his strong, muscular bear hug of an endorsement, he opines:
In sum, Tony Blair has redefined British liberalism. He has made liberalism about embracing, managing and cushioning globalization, about embracing and expanding freedom - through muscular diplomacy where possible and force where necessary - and about embracing fiscal discipline.
Tom, you really should put the thesaurus down and get out more. (British Airways wouldn't mind some product placement.) It's precisely because of his support for such things the British people have stopped "embracing" Tony Blair. They've been cuckolded by the bride they twice married, but that pre-nup gave them a vast majority in Parliament. Plus Michael Howard is scary and Charles Kennedy just can't embrace momentum.
And before you give any more advice to Democrats, search your newspaper's archives: we had a president who embraced globalization and fiscal discipline. He was impeached. We had a candidate who cozied up to the same principles, and an election was stolen from him. Do you actually think any Democratic policy will make up for the fact we face candidates who lie, cheat and steal in order to be elected and then claim they're the persecuted victims of filibustering Democrats?
Maybe if people like Tom Friedman used their bully pulpit to point out such conceits occasionally, instead of embracing British politicians they've never met, Democratic principles—which are as right and true as any Tony Blair ever spouted—might actually be embraced.
Be the change you want to see, Tom.
