Ah Kinsley in the good old days


Michael Kinsley is arguing with Brad De Long about whether he said that the theory that "President Bush was determined to invade Iraq the year before he did so. The whole "weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions" was paranoid. Actually Kinsley didn't argue, he simply ignored the fact that he wrote "Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence." in the same column.

I attempted to defend Kinsley by arguing that the "paranoid theory" he was talking about was that the he Michael Kinsley was "personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office covering up the Bush administration lies." Ellen 1910 came up with the much more plausible argument that the "paranoid theory" was that the MSM was covering up Bush's lies.

All in all I am disappointed in Kinsley. I tried to restore my esteme for Kinsley by recalling the good old days in which Kinsley wrote roughly (I am quoting from memory)

"I love the snappy way The Economist writes "there are three things the government should do about this problem" although I sometimes wonder if The Economist decides that there are three things the government should do about this problem before they decide exactly which three things. In fact I sometimes wonder if The Economist decides that there are three things the government should do about this problem before they decide exactly which problem"

This was a disaster, since I now suspect that Kinsley decided to snear at a paranoid theory without deciding exactly which paranoid theory he was snearing at.