New at Reason: Matt Welch on the Banal Authoritarianism of Do-Something Punditry

November 22, 2011

Consider for a moment the paradoxical pain of being a best-selling political pundit so successful that American presidents don’t just seek but heed your advice. You have lobbied in your columns for the commander in chief to deploy your signature catch phrases, and he has. You have, in times of both crisis and sloth, advocated robust federal action in the name of national “greatness,” and the people in power have mostly followed suit. You have been flattered by invitations to the White House and pecked at by lesser partisans, yet you’ve maintained your critical distance in the patriotic spirit of post-ideological problem solving. All this influence and success, and somehow the country still sucks.

Maybe those pundits should look in the mirror. As Editor in Chief Matt Welch points out, we actually live in a David Brooks/Thomas L. Friedman world, yet now that the results have come in those same pundits are trying to wash their hands of the whole experiment.

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