In this morning’s post, I referenced what has become the most common
and vapid Beltway rhetorical device — namely, the use of the term
“Serious” to bestow with respectability the people who furrow their
brows and show great reverence for government and military leaders and
reflexively support American wars and believe that muddled compromise
and principle-free “moderation” is the Ultimate Good, while demonizing
as “unserious” those who have actual convictions — such as the belief
that war is a horrific option that should never be pursued unless
absolutely necessary for self-defense and the belief that government
leaders should have their claims subjected to real scrutiny and they
themselves should be subjected to investigation and punishment when
they break the law.

In defending himself as one of the “Serious” Beltway analysts, and
in defense of what he understands as “Seriousness,” this is what Klein
wrote:

And now, among certain precincts in the blogosphere — those
prohibitively clever sorts who opine daily and endlessly about
journalism without doing any reporting (or much thinking) about it — a
new epithet: serious. This is meant to convey disdain for those of us
who grant undue credibility to people in positions of authority or
people of moderate political views. The critics have a point: There is
no credible moderate position on issues like torture. And those people
in positions of authority who gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on the
war in Iraq — including my singular and momentary lapse on Meet the Press — failed the test of being truly serious.
But, all things considered, I’m not ready to surrender that very
valuable word to the cynics and will continue to use “serious” as I
always have, unironically. Usually.

To my mind, being a “serious person” means the following: you
study the facts on the ground, you study the history, you take into
account opinions on all sides — not just your side — and then you
come to a conclusion. Essentially, that’s what I try to do, and also
the people I admire across the political spectrum (including many who
reside in the blogosphere). I don’t always succeed, of course.
Sometimes, instant
opinions offered on TV shows (see above), can seem deeply unserious and
ill-considered the moment they escape one’s lips. And various
serious people I know have momentary or long-term lapses, sometimes
very serious ones, on this issue or that. I can disagree with someone
profoundly — as with John McCain on Iraq — and still value their
opinions on other issues (immigration, fiscal responsibility and so
forth).

First, the good news: Klein seems to admit,
for the first time, that he supported the invasion of Iraq. Up until
now, he had been falsely denying it.
I would say that a pre-requisite to being Serious is being honest about
whether you supported or opposed a war before it began.

But note how odd — and unserious — Klein’s confession is. He actually
seems to be saying that he accidentally supported the invasion of Iraq
as the result of a “singular and momentary lapse” on television whereby
a pro-war position “escaped his lips” — almost like it was an
involuntary outburst or seizure of some sort — and he argued that we
ought to militarily invade another country. To the viewer, Klein’s
advocacy of attacking Iraq might “seem deeply unserious and
ill-considered the moment [it] escaped [his] lips,” but he is still
Serious.

Presumably, Klein also suffered the same sort of “singular and momentary lapse” when he went on national television and suggested
that we might want to launch a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran —
that we might drop an atomic weapon on that country even if we are not
attacked. Apparently, Serious People sometimes are prone to go on
television and start urging wars and even nuclear attacks on other
nations when they don’t really mean it.

In any event, the problem with the self-anointed “Serious” Beltway
elite is not, contrary to Klein’s self-flattery, that they study too
much information or take too many views into account. Nor is the
problem with their vaunted Seriousness concept that it places too much
of a premium on compromise and agreement, nor that it grants too much
respect for those who hold different views.

The actual problem is that the term “Serious” when wielded by
Beltway denizens is nothing more than a cheap and manipulative tactic
to demonize those with non-Beltway-approved views without actually
doing the work to demonstrate that those views are wrong. Beltway
“Seriousness” has nothing whatever to do with the studious and careful
methods one uses to reach conclusions. It has everything to do with the
ideologically correct nature of the beliefs and, much more importantly
still, the Authority and Place in the Beltway Court of those who are
expressing them.

That is how, prior to the invasion of Iraq, Howard Dean and other
war opponents became so terribly “unserious” while Bill Kristol, Peter
Beinert, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, the Brookings
Institution, Joe Lieberman, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney were Very
Very Serious — despite the fact that Dean expressed more wisdom about
Iraq every time he sneezed than all of the Serious National Security
People managed to compile in all of their millions of words about
Saddam’s mushroom clouds and the Evil Labs of Dr. Germ and Mrs.
Anthrax.

Klein thinks that he is mocked as “Serious” because he does too much
work studying ideas and information. Actually, the opposite is true.

The “Serious” mockery stems from the fact that his views are
unaccompanied by any such work and are devoid of any critical thought.
Klein, for instance, famously defended the President’s NSA lawbreaking
by admitting
his Bush defense rested in blissful ignorance: “People like me who
favor this program don’t yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to
it know even less — and certainly less than I do.”

That is what a Serious Person does — blindly trusts the President even
when he breaks the law, and demonizes as Unserious those who object to
presidential lawbreaking, exactly what Klein did when he scorned Unserious Nancy Pelosi in the pages of Time
because she said that George Bush should not commit felonies when
spying on Americans. Klein called objections to Bush’s lawbreaking
“civil-liberties fetishism” and said “these concerns [i.e., that Bush
broke the law] pale before the importance of the program.”

Klein also warned that if Democrats continued to object to illegal
eavesdropping, “they will probably not regain the majority in Congress
or the country,” because “liberal Democrats are . . . far from the
American mainstream” on this issue. The hallmark of Beltway Seriousness
is the inability to do anything other than spout authority-worshipping
conventional wisdom (“you better revere the President even when he
breaks the law, and stop investigating him so much, or else you will
lose elections”) which is wrong time and again, while branding as
“Unserious” anyone who challenges Beltway orthodoxy and, especially,
who opposes too strenuously the High Beltway media and government
priests. That is the essence of Beltway Seriousness.

Several days ago, I referenced a Joe Klein post
from January in which he called Paul Krugman an “ill-informed
dilettante” and said Krugman made “a fool of himself” when Krugman
argued against the Surge. Illustrating the Virtues of Beltway
Seriousness, Klein complained that Krugman failed to study the Complex,
Important Issues surrounding the Surge, unlike Serious Analysts like
himself, Bill Kristol and Fred Kagan:

As for [Kristol and Kagan], Krugman’s right: they’ve been wrong about Iraq. But at
least they’ve taken the trouble to read the doctrine and talk to key
players like Keane and General David Petraeus. Liberals won’t ever be
trusted on national security until they start doing their homework.

After
I posted that, I received an email from Krugman pointing out that —
directly contrary to what Klein accused him of — Krugman had written a
column
months earlier, entitled “Arithmetic of Failure,” discussing the
military doctrine of counterinsurgency, and explaining why it was
impossible for the U.S. military to succeed with this strategy. Vincent
Rossmeier, a journalism student at NYU who works with me on various
projects, reviewed Klein’s accusations and Krugman’s column and then
wrote:

Krugman is completely right concerning Klein’s
unfounded accusation. In the “The Arithmetic of Failure”, Krugman cites
what he calls “The classic analysis of the arithmetic of insurgencies”,
a 1995 piece written by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand
Corporation entitled “Force Requirements in Stability Operations”. He
found that “Mr. Quinlivan’s comparisons suggested that even small
countries might need large occupying forces”.

He then goes on to argue that in a country as large as Iraq, with
as much chaos and sectarian animosity as it currently has within its
borders, the US would probably need at least 500,000 soldiers on the
ground to ever subdue the competing factions. Krugman concludes that
there’s no way this is possible given our current military capacity. In
the end, Iraq is just too big of a job for the US to handle.

Krugman wrote this in October 2006, before President Bush had
adopted his surge policy (perhaps before it had even been publicly
disseminated) and therefore he’s definitely right to feel irate that
Klein, who continually has been wrong in his predictions and analyses
about the Iraq War, would accuse him of not doing his homework. As
is so often the case with Klein, he asserted his own personal opinion
as fact, whereas Krugman relied on a well-respected study to come to
the conclusion that he did.

Krugman finishes his article by arguing how we have a much better
chance of succeeding in Afghanistan than Iraq. He points out that if we
transferred in troops from Iraq, they’d be much better utilized and
achieve greater progress towards our military objectives than they ever
could in Iraq. The situation in Afghanistan, despite the recent
deterioration in conditions, is still less chaotic than the civil war
raging in Iraq. Krugman postulates that we were at a tipping point in
Afghanistan (proven correct by the recent security and terrorist threat
analysis documenting the reemergence of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban there
and on the Pakistan border). In
short, everything Krugman predicted has come to pass and Klein is, as
per usual, the one whose claims have no basis in reality.

Joe
Klein and his fellow “Serious” People in the Beltway have given this
country George Bush, Dick Cheney, the invasion of Iraq, ongoing support
for the four-year occupation with no end in sight, a public that
overwhelmingly believed that Saddam planned the 9/11 attacks, a
complete assault on our Constitution with barely a peep of protest, a
chronically lawbreaking government with no consequences, virtually
absolute government secrecy, the collapse of America’s moral standing
around the world, and a new war with Iran that is just a small
provocation away. Beltway Seriousness, know thee by the fruits you bear.

UPDATE: Atrios notes a classic examples of the use of Seriousness, from NBC News’ David Gregory on Chris Matthews’ show this weekend:

Mr.
GREGORY: I think Hillary Clinton — her sister soldier [sic] moment is
going to be telling the left that they have to sort of move beyond
their hatred over Iraq, for Bush, and think about how they’re going to engage the war on terror in a very serious and tough way.

As
Atrios says: “I’m not quite sure how David Gregory imagines The Left is
supposed to be engaging with the war on terror. . . . But, clearly,
those people who oppose Bush’s little war and think that getting out of
Iraq is a good idea are very unserious indeed.”

Gregory’s comment is just devoid of meaning — “the left” needs “to
engage the war on terror in a very serious and tough way.” What does
that even mean? Nothing. The Beltway stars who endlessly dole out the
Seriousness sermons really never do anything other than spout the most
meaningless platitudes grounded in mindless, crusty, decade-old
Washington media conventional wisdom. Hence: the Democratic candidate
needs to “Sister Souljah” the Left and the Left needs to get “tough and
serious” with the Terrorists, says the Serious Washington Journalist
who can think only in slogans and cliches.

UPDATE II: Klein responds to this post here.
I don’t have the time right now to reply further to it, and I’m not
sure there is much to address even if I had the time, but — completely
independent of whether his responses have any merit or are even
actually responsive in any meaningful way — I will give Klein credit
for at least attempting to address criticisms of this sort.