Adam's Apple
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- Apr 25, 2004
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Pandering on the Left
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
September 19, 2007
Today, political discourse has become so toxic that some politicians are happy to exploit a slander like MoveOn's. "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV," one Democratic senator anonymously told the Capitol Hill newspaper Politico a few days before Petraeus testified. "The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." MoveOn didn't disappoint.
To their credit, some Democrats and prominent liberals repudiated MoveOn's slur. Former New York mayor Ed Koch labeled MoveOn "vile" and urged "decent people . . . to come to the general's defense." Washington Post eminence David Broder called the ad "disgraceful" and "juvenile." The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Michigan's Carl Levin, was equally blunt. "Totally inappropriate," he said. "There is no place for that kind of personal attack on our military people."
The only Democratic presidential candidate unafraid to tell off MoveOn was Senator Joseph Biden. Queried on "Meet the Press," he replied forthrightly: "I don't buy into that. This is an honorable guy. He's telling the truth."
for full article:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/19/pandering_on_the_left
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
September 19, 2007
Today, political discourse has become so toxic that some politicians are happy to exploit a slander like MoveOn's. "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV," one Democratic senator anonymously told the Capitol Hill newspaper Politico a few days before Petraeus testified. "The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." MoveOn didn't disappoint.
To their credit, some Democrats and prominent liberals repudiated MoveOn's slur. Former New York mayor Ed Koch labeled MoveOn "vile" and urged "decent people . . . to come to the general's defense." Washington Post eminence David Broder called the ad "disgraceful" and "juvenile." The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Michigan's Carl Levin, was equally blunt. "Totally inappropriate," he said. "There is no place for that kind of personal attack on our military people."
The only Democratic presidential candidate unafraid to tell off MoveOn was Senator Joseph Biden. Queried on "Meet the Press," he replied forthrightly: "I don't buy into that. This is an honorable guy. He's telling the truth."
for full article:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/19/pandering_on_the_left