Paul Krugman had a column* yesterday raising the question of why it took so long for the press to realize the problems with entrusting the presidency with Dubya. He referenced remarks he himself made in November 2000 that only seemed remarkably prescient because others did not take proper attention. This is not only the case with easy to ridicule members of the "MSM" (another at least slightly annoying "in" acroymn usually used in a disparaging matter) by an means. People who one would think should know better -- including quite thoughtful members of the message board academy with totally proper ideological identies -- were at least somewhat shocked at how bad things turned out.
I find this somewhat annoying. Before the Election, I read Molly Ivins' take on the guy (Shrub). Ivins is a progressive voice with a long term experience watching Texas politics. I first read a collection of her essays before Bush was even governor. She views things through a progressive prism, but people across the board generally trust her perceptive and knowledge of Texas politics. And, her book -- as she somewhat peevishly (in her playful way) noted in her sequel -- is quite predictive of the style of governance Bush now favors. Now, I admit my general reason for not liking him in '00 was because I thought him a bit of an idiot. Still, all the other stuff didn't bode well either.
Surely, I am not in no way "shocked" at how things turned out. Maybe, I did not think he would go as far as he did in some ways -- but the general bad taste follows his past performance. The same really arises when dealing with Iraq. You actually have totally intelligent people quite surprised at how messy things are these days. You know, the EXACT SAME THING many opponents of the war feared, including entrusting things in these people's hands. Apropos of a recent PBS documentary on Helen of Troy (and Sparta), such fears are akin to Cassandra -- the Trojan prophet doomed to be right, but not to be believed.
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* I read this column in the library -- another way is to find a loose paper, which often is quite possible in Manhattan. The days of actually just going online to read them is over with the new "Times Select" service in which they want you to pay $50 to have the privilege of reading editorials and other "prime" pieces as well as searching the archives.
Uh, I have access to an archive much wider than your paper's resources, and your editorials are not that precious. In fact, some blogs link to some of them anyhow. There is also a "14 day" trial deal, but no thanks. At least, Salon just forces you to view an advertisement for their "day pass." After the whole Miller mess, the NYT really does not need less readership.