For some reason, this Washington Monthly post only came to my attention today. Steve Benen speculates about William Kristol’s tenure at the New York Times. Embedded in his post are some thoughts of George Packer from the New Yorker, the gist being that Kristol should lose his job not because he’s dumber than shit, not because he’s always wrong, but because his columns suck, because in addition to all the aforementioned, they are badly written.
I don’t read Kristol. I rely on others to do that for me. I do think it would be interesting to annotate his Times columns. How many facts does he get wrong? How many predictions does he get right? Is he ever right? The statistics would be interesting. Is someone worth keeping as a columnist as a sort of canary in the mine? Is past performance predictive. Can we count on Kristol always being wrong, thus giving us a reliable inverse guide to future events? These are difficult issues, but a statistical analysis of his columns might just provide some valuable insights.
As to his job, I feel no hesitation in saying it is quite secure. Being a conservative, he is entirely within his rights to bash the Times without fear of retribution. Being a pundit, of whatever political stripe (but certainly as a conservative) his past performance is no impediment to future employment. If I lost every case I ever handled, I would be an ex-lawyer. If a doctor kills every patient, he or she will quickly be an ex-doctor. But pundits, at least those in the upper stratosphere of punditry, can screw up as often as they like. Their predictions are tossed into the memory hole long before they are proven wrong. Kristol is a good example. Always wrong, yet always in demand. Only one thing dooms a Washington pundit to irrelevancy: getting it right. That involves challenging beltway dogma, and we can’t have that. Ask all the folks who tried to tell us that Saddam had no WMDs, and the war wouldn’t be a cakewalk. Where are they now?
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