Serious foreign policy mavens often mock George W. Bush for his black-and-white view of the world and argue that diplomacy requires more sophisticated analysis and awareness. So it was surprising to see my friend Steve Clemons, foreign policy maven supreme at the New America Foundation, engage in binary political analysis. Writing in his blog, Clemons accused me--egads!--of "Hillary-leaning." Why level such a charge? Because I had criticized Barack Obama for vowing to meet with the leaders of North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela without preconditions in his first year as president (should he be elected).

I've not endorsed any candidate, and, as far as I can tell, no candidate has been eagerly awaiting such a decision from me. But I've said many times, I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton, and I would be pleased to see Obama run a marvelous and effective campaign. My own fancies aside, I remain an independent journalist. And I call 'em as I see 'em. If Obama blows an opportunity, I will note that--not to help the Hillaryites, but to be honest and to be of service to my readers. Steve, I write; I don't lean.

In the squabble over Obama's reply to the meet-with-thugs question, several bloggers and commentators (on both sides of the Obama-Clinton divide) have acted more like spinners than journalists, looking to score points for their side. For instance, there's Glenn Greenwald of Salon.

In a recent post, he pointed to my article on Obama's answer and insinuated I was just another member of the inside-the-Beltway media elite. Wow, where's my membership card? Far be it from me to explain to outside-the-Beltway Greenwald that writing a book titled The Lies of George W. Bush, reporting the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the manipulation of the prewar intelligence on Iraq (for the book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the War), being the journalist who first noted that the CIA leak might be evidence of a White House crime, and writing skeptically of the Iraq war before the invasion hardly makes one a member of Washington's media elite. (I could add much more to that list, including contributing to Salon, as I have done in the past.)

In critiquing my Obama piece, Greenwald huffs,

That is how this works perpetually -- media elites repeatedly masquerade their own conventional wisdom and biases as "American centrism" and any deviation as "extremism" or "unseriousness" or even "craziness."

This is plain silliness (not "craziness"). I do not "masquerade" my own views as "American centrism." They are my views alone. My belief was that Obama's reply was problematic and would be used against him. I wrote that. It had nothing to do with ideology or "extremism."

He goes on:

To be clear, none of this is about whether I personally believe it is a good idea to commit to face-to-face meetings in the first 12 months of a presidency with every hostile world leader regardless of the circumstances.

Come again? If it's not a good idea, why shouldn't a political reporter note that a candidate gave an answer in televised debate that was not a "good idea"?

The real discussion is indeed whether Obama's answer was a sound one. If Bush presented an idea that Greenwald considered unsound, I'm sure he would pounce on it and call on media elites in and out of the nation's capital to publicize the presidential error. After all, sometimes a story about a debate reply is just a story about a debate reply.

In the meantime, I'm late for brunch with David Broder and Tim Russert, where--this week--we're going to figure out how we can push Joe Biden into the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates. We blinded-by-conventional-wisdom media elites like a challenge.

Posted by David Corn at July 29, 2007 03:36 PM