INCOMPETENCE OR MENDACITY, YOU MAKE THE CALL

In Blair We Trust (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, July 8, 2003, NY Times)

One of the saddest results of our war in Iraq is that it may finish off Tony Blair before Saddam Hussein.

Everywhere I go in Britain, people dismiss Mr. Blair as President Bush's poodle. Mr. Blair's Labor Party has fallen behind the Conservatives in the latest poll, for only the second time in 11 years. "The Iraq critics think that the prime minister has betrayed his country to a Texas gunslinger," William Rees-Mogg noted in The Times of London.

So it'll sound foolish when I suggest that President Bush should study Mr. Blair and learn a few things. [...]

Mr. Blair dignifies his opponents by grappling with their arguments in a way that helps preserve civility--and that we Americans can learn
from.

It's sad that the Times has become such a laughingstock that you can no longer tell when folks there are being incompetent from when they're intentionally lying, but Mr. Kristof's point is absurd. The differences between the way Tony Blair and George Bush have dealt with their opponents are almost entirely a function of the fact that Blair's opponents are of his own Party, while Bush's are of the actual opposition. Mr.. Blair has to grovel before his Labour comrades or face losing power when they rebel, but he doesn't offer the Tories anything like the same "grappling" when it is they who object to his various other policies. Were the Conservatives the only ones questioning him, his answers--offered only at PM's Question Time--would be as dismissive as Mr. Bush's. Mr. Blair leads the wrong party and that requires him to do things in which he does not believe. He is acting out of a perfectly natural instinct for self-preservation, but let's not try and turn his embarrassing self-abasement into some kind of unique and honorable virtue. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2003 10:12 AM