I had secretly hoped it had all been a bad dream, or that the Times had changed its mind.
Six days had passed since the paper announced it would give Bill Kristol a column, and still his smirking prose had yet to appear on the op-ed page.
What if it just went on like this? One blessed day after another without a first column from Kristol, until one day that first column just never came? Birds would sing, children would come out to play, and the dark clouds would just roll away.
It was a new year. Obama had just won the Iowa Caucus. Anything was possible.
Then it came. Black Monday. January 7, 2008. The paper of record ran its first Bill Kristol column.
Adding insult to injury, the piece ran on Monday, meaning Kristol will appear on the same day as my hero Paul Krugman, he of the scruffy beard who speaks truth to power.
This is it, New York Times. This is war.
But first, a little perspective. The Times has been very quiet about hiring Kristol. You would have expected at least a stray mention of the subject in "The Opinionator" or "The Board." But no.
So it's possible Kristol's column is just a quiet experiment that will go the way of cold fusion. But just as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (Wendell Phillips), shining a light on Bill Kristol's dim wit and dull prose is a public service, even if his days as a Times columnist are numbered anyway, by such things as his dim wit and dull prose.
It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Let's start with the opening line of Kristol's first column, a "thank you" to Senator Obama that turns out to be, like everything Kristol writes, disingenuous. For the purpose of Kristol's first column is not to thank Obama, but to ask how to stop him from becoming President.
Let's recap. Obama's victory in Iowa infused more optimism and excitement into American politics than anything in 20 years. It gave the young and young at heart a reason to believe in the future. An Obama presidency promises to restore a sense of integrity, charity, and public justice to our beleaguered nation.
The natural question this raises for Bill Kristol is: How do we stop it?
The answer, Kristol claims, is something "inquiring minds want to know," a phrase that indicates Kristol thinks the Times shares its readership with the National Enquirer.
The rest of Kristol's column can be summed up in the phrase, "Mike Huckabee: Maybe not as bad as he seems."
My favorite part comes when Kristol clears his throat to sing a tentative first few bars of Huckabee's praises.
First, Kristol explains Huckabee's popularity by noting that after eight years of Bush, Americans are ready for a likeable guy. I guess Kristol forgot that he helped sell George Bush to the American people as, um, a likeable guy.
Kristol then says, "Huckabee seems to be that." I love the tentative, parsing nature of that endorsement. Bill Kristol, ever the weasel.
But wait, there's more. Huckabee, Kristol says, "came up from modest origins." Don't you love the way Kristol writes? "Came up" from "modest origins," as if Huckabee sort of levitated from the primeval muck onto a country back road and began tramping his way to the White House. It's so patronizing, "came up from modest origins." It makes you wonder if he really means it as a compliment.
No. No, he doesn't.
"Origins" itself is an odd choice. Kristol must be trying to associate Huckabee with Lincoln, "origin" being a 19th Century word for what people today mean by "background." They were always talking about Lincoln's "humble origins." But I'm only reminded of Pervez Musharraf's excuse for imposing martial law in Pakistan, that Abraham Lincoln and Napolean would have done the same thing.
Here's how to tell you're reading propaganda: People like Abraham Lincoln and Napolean get thrown in together. Or people like Huckabee and Lincoln.
Here's a clue that Huckabee is not like Lincoln: Lincoln didn't want to send doctors to prison for performing abortions, bankrupt social security, or attempt to fund the government through a sales tax.
Also, I think Lincoln, were he living today, would believe in evolution.
Kristol takes a quick swipe at the "nanny state," a phrase that insults both government programs providing critical assistance to millions and America's working nannies, and that further reveals that Kristol equates wasteful government expenditures with compassionate people who help care for children. How cold-hearted is that?
Finally, Kristol settles on what he must think is Huckabee's finest qualification for the nation's highest office: He lost weight.
That's an admirable thing, yes, but a strange one for Kristol to single out, and as a professional qualification it's more on the level of Spokesperson for National Sandwich Chain than President of the United States.
And so it goes.
My problem is not that the Times has hired a conservative columnist. My problem is that they've given that job to a neo-conservative propagandist who did as much as anyone to promote the lies that led us into Iraq. Kristol isn't a thoughtful or intelligent writer, he's a partisan hack.
But if we're stuck with Bill Kristol in the pages of the Times, the least we can do is have a little fun with him.
Oh, and as I write this, Obama is cruising to another convincing win, this time in New Hampshire.
Follow Sean Carman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/seancarman
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