Smith cheerleaders and critical thinking

There was a column in the New York Times one year ago, in June 2007, by a fellow named Timothy Egan. This guest commentary was a paean to US Senator Gordon Smith and Smith has gotten Frequent Flyer miles out of that column, rest assured. Egan fawned all over himself to extol the myriad virtues of our Senator—though it’s not clear where Egan is actually personally from. I strongly suspect he wrote the piece on the payroll of Smith, of the Republicans, or that he is willfully ignoring logic. Indeed, Egan seemed aware of the great numbers who have viewed Smith’s “change of heart” on Iraq (from chickenhawk to faux Bush opponent) and set them up as straw men to be knocked down with…illogic and avoidance. Here is Egan’s strongest defense of Smith’s cynical speech:

“Some people question the timing of the senator’s change of heart. Smith is vulnerable in this blue state, they say, and his conversion is just a ploy to save his seat. But there is something else at work here. Smith has the seat once held by Senator Mark Hatfield, another Republican who defied his party on matters of war and peace. Hatfield was a Navy man, a veteran of Iwo Jima and one of the first Americans to see Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped. All that carnage changed his world view.

Smith was never in the armed forces. His biggest regret in life, he says, is that he never wore his country’s uniform. But unlike some chicken-hawks who did not serve — chief among them, Vice President Cheney, with his numerous draft deferments — he is not trying to make up for lost courage.”

Wait a minute. “There is something else at work here.” Like what? What does Hatfield’s strong position on pulling out of Vietnam—made public and powerfully when he was regarded as outré and marginalized as weak—have to do with Smith’s election season conversion? When the American people sent the strong signal in November 2006 that they wanted new leadership in Washington that would end the Iraquagmire, Smith’s antenna were up and working. He did a neat half-pirouette exactly one month later and announced his new rehabilitated position, one that lined up in our blue state. Hatfield had exactly nothing whatsoever to do with this, nor was it a Hatfieldesque profile in courage. We call it the Smith profile in pusillanimity.