The Vexation of Charles Krauthammer

July 18th, 2008 Posted in Obama, Politics, ressentiment

Krauthammer is not talking about his own fascination with Obama here:

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly

And that he doesn’t grasp that irony really sums up the sad lack of awareness represented by columns like these.

Why does the Washington Post run such pieces, columns that are not meant to persuade or analyze, but rather to preach to a small, partisan choir? Pieces that are derivative and unthoughtful regurgitation of cable news political shows?

The whole “Obama’s Vanity” and “Obama’s Hubris” meme has been around for some time (in fact, it was first raised by Obama himself). Its revival has its origins in the desperation of gossip-starved political political programs to find something new to talk about in their post-Rev. Wright recession.

Here’s how you handle the fact that nothing sticks: make the success itself the problem. For the television pundits, the impetus is just finding something to get breathless about. For Krauthammer it’s a political opportunity.

That’s why pundits like him write columns like these, both intellectually vacuous and unpersuasive. What they are trying to do is take an idea that is damaging to the opposition and keep it alive. They’re political players, not strategists: their work is the columnist’s version of a push poll. It’s actually important that the idea be wholly unoriginal, and its persuasiveness is irrelevant as long as the idea itself survives.

In the meantime, they fail to see what a time-worn and frankly pathetic idea they’re peddling. No successful person escapes such accusations — “he’s just vain,” “he’s just arrogant.” There’s a name for what motivates them: envy. Trumpeting your envy as your opponent’s “vanity” is a little trick with rhetorical mirrors, meant to turn respect for prowess into resentment of it.

And by the way: it doesn’t work.