The Dean

A few days ago, David Broder penned a column attacking (probably too strong a term -- Broder is always purposely mild in his "attacks") the Bush Administration for its alleged "secrecy" in a number of areas. One such area was the so-called "shadow government" plans:

Meantime, key legislators in both parties were chagrined to learn from The Post's Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt that Bush had instituted a "shadow government" of sequestered senior civil servants after the 9-11 attacks without telling anyone on Capitol Hill.

Bush is absolutely right in saying that he has "an obligation as the president [to] put measures in place that, should somebody be successful in attacking Washington, D.C., [would guarantee] there's an ongoing government."

But it is inexplicable that he would not share his prudent action with all four top congressional leaders, with whom he meets weekly, so they would have the reassurance that came from that knowledge. If he cannot trust them that far, what does it imply?

Now, almost immediately after the Post reporters "broke" this non-story, it was debunked in a number of places; Brit Hume's column is one such example. But nobody took the "Dean" of D.C. journalists to task for reporting this debunked tale as fact in support of his broader thesis. Nobody ever takes the "Dean" to task on anything he writes, no matter how dubious (although he's often sufficiently inoffensive and bland as to avoid dubious statements). Why?

I think it's akin to the world of bloggery. Think of the "Dean" as an A-Lister. Many bloggers don't want to take the chance of offending an A-lister, lest they ruin any chance of ever getting that elusive link from said A-lister that means they've been (or will be) "discovered." Some bloggers will, of course, take an A-Lister to task in order to try to get said A-Lister to recognize them for their provocative dissenting view. And others of us find the whole rat race for A-Lister links to be more than a little absurd) (I wish I had thought of that, actually! It still makes me laugh). But the end result is that there's very little criticism of A-Listers, or of the "Dean."

[Posted at 14:33 CST on 03/09/02] [Link]