Andrew Sullivan's blog was one of the first that I read. I was hooked. His writing was intelligent, witty, and provocative. I disagreed with him on lots of things, but always found myself challenged.
Andrew is a fiscal conservative, a social liberal, and a hawk on foreign policy. He has supported Bush in the past, but the President's endorsement of a constitutional amendment on marriage and his mismanagement on the Iraq war (an invasion Sullivan enthusiastically supported) have drawn Andrew's wrath.
On Wednesday Andrew finally wrote his endorsement of John Kerry for President.
Today James Lilek gave Andrew's endorsement a good fisking. (If you've never read Lileks, be patient during the first few paragraphs--it sometimes takes him a little while to get going!)
Anyway, I decided to write Andrew a letter this morning. I was pleasantly surprised tonight to see that he had reprinted it onto his site (all posted letters are anonymous).
Here is what he reprinted. I do hope he takes it to heart. (BTW, though I do editing for a living, I am a virtual typo machine! So I've cleaned up some of my typos which remain in the post on Andrew's site.)
Obviously the Kerry endorsement surprised no one. You made the case for him as well as can be made, I suppose. I do suspect--though I don't know--that you don't truly believe in your heart that Kerry is the kind of man to lead the next phase of the GWOT. It does seem as if, in the deepest recesses of your heart, you wish you could cast a "no" vote on Bush without casting a "yes" vote for Kerry. If this weren't true, I don't think elements of your primary endorsement for Kerry would include things like he will be forced to do the right thing, and the fact that he sounded militarily strong at his convention!
You, of course, are free to endorse Kerry. But I suspect that I am not alone in telling you this: From now on, whenever you write something hawkish on your blog, I will silently say to myself--every time--Yes, Andrew, but you voted for John Kerry. Again, I think deep in your heart you know that John Kerry is not the sort of man who understands the GWOT. Imagine telling yourself a year ago that you would be voting for a candidate who said that 9/11 didn't really change his views much at all, and that he longed for the 9/10 days where terrorism was a "nuisance"!
On to my main point: my largest disappointment is that I'm increasingly finding your blog difficult to differentiate from the MSM. That's one of the reasons I became a reader and contributor in the first place. You weren't afraid to stick it to the NYT. You presented "the other side" that the MSM were ignoring on Iraq.
But now, I fear you are deeply identifying with the MSM. And maybe you are now at a place where you can understand the internal rationality of the liberal media bias: you get to a point where you detest a large number of Bush's policies to such a degree that you will do anything it takes to make him look stupid or, ultimately, to ensure a Bush defeat. In the last month I've read in amazement as you consistently pick the outlier poll to highlight, showing phantom Kerry momentum. All of a sudden, you have begun treating CBS and the NYT as two neutral, utterly reliable news sources. You have begun appealing to Joshua Micah Marshall to back you up! Yes, we know you have deep anger and resentment toward the President. Fine. But at least, perhaps, you could hide it a bit. It's starting to seem like there isn't a mainstream Bush-bashing story that you don't devour. There's hardly a Kerry endorsement you won't highlight. Every Bush misstep is further evidence that there's no plan and the world is going to end in Iraq. You think the weapons cache story al Qa Qaa is "exhibit A" in the case of "criminal negligence" on the part of the Bush administration--before you've even done any research on the story yourself. (Since when has the modus operandi of Andrew Sullivan been that the NYT says it, it must be true?!) You also seem to act as if the liberal bias of the MSM and their sloppy journalistic standards--something you used to speak passionately and persuasively on--have disappeared.
