Maureen Dowd’s Two Faces of Barry!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

The one face of Milbank and Dowd: In this morning’s Washington Post, Milbank plays the silly card with respect to Susan Rice.

But first, Maureen Dowd played the silly card with respect to President Barry. On Sunday, she started her column like this, pitiful headline included:

DOWD (9/8/13): Barry’s War Within

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize had been up late pleading for war.

The president looked exhausted as he met the press in St. Petersburg on Friday. The man elected because of his magical powers of persuasion had failed to persuade other world leaders at dinner the night before about a strike on Syria.

Return of belittling nickname? Check.

Silly pseudo-contradiction? Check. (Man of peace pleads for war!) Loaded account of the way he looked? Check.

Everyone knew what was coming next. Soon, the doctor was IN:

DOWD: It is uncomfortable to watch the president struggle to reconcile his two conflicting identities as he weighs what he calls the unappetizing choices on Syria, and as he is weighed down by the malignant choices on the Middle East made by his predecessor.

In his head, is Barry at war with the commander in chief?

One side of him is Barry, the smooth consensus builder and community organizer, the former constitutional professor and the drive-by senator who must stand by the argument he made when he ran for president excoriating W.’s and Dick Cheney’s highhandedness: checks and balances must be observed...

When it came time to act as commander in chief, he choked and reverted to Senator Barry...

In our view, it is beyond “uncomfortable” to watch the New York Times offer this pitiful dreck to the public. That said, Dowd has been playing these games for so long that the liberal world doesn’t seem willing or able to see it.

In Dowd’s childish Two Faces of Barack, the smooth “Barry” may be at war with the commander in chief! Soon, she offered her childish take on Nancy Pelosi:

“Now the president who saw no benefit in wooing Democrats on the Hill is desperate for their love. Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco peacenik, will have to win Barry the right to bomb.”

To Dowd, Pelosi is a “peacenik.” Dowd, a childish empty soul, is living in 1960.

This morning, Milbank follows. For him, as for Dowd, life-and-death issues get resolved to simple-minded pseudo-ironies. Headline included:

MILBANK (9/10/13): Susan Rice returns to CIA talking points

This is the price of insularity.

About a year ago, the White House put Susan Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations, on TV to read CIA talking points that turned out to be false about the attack in Benghazi, Libya.

The backlash poisoned her relationship with Republicans in Congress and dashed her chances of becoming secretary of state. President Obama instead named her national security adviser, which didn’t require Senate confirmation.

Now there is another crisis. Obama needs congressional support for a military strike on Syria, because a “no” vote could cripple his presidency and damage American credibility. So what do the big brains in the White House do? They put Susan Rice in front of TV cameras to read CIA talking points.

Rice is back on the CIA points! It’s just like last year!

Milbank forgets to note a basic fact from last year’s batch of points: When Rice was “put on TV to read CIA talking points that turned out to be false about Benghazi,” she noted, again and again, that she was offering preliminary assessments—that the investigation was continuing, that the facts might change.

Beyond that, the points Rice read last year weren’t all that false if you review what she actually said. Milbank isn’t going to do that. The pundit clowns to forget.

In our main set of posts this week, we are reviewing the “adult abuse” readers get from the New York Times. For many people, it’s hard to grasp the depth of the inanity displayed by our press corps elites.

Is Nancy Pelosi a peacenik: In this morning’s New York Times, Jennifer Steinhauer profiles Pelosi.

Is Nancy Pelosi a silly peacenik? In the mind of the broken child Dowd, she is! For a more adult portrait, click here.