It’s true that Harry Reid can be a bit blunt, but when you look at his history of insulting people, he’s always completely correct. He said George W. Bush was a loser. Well, if he were not a loser, he’d be introducing Romney at the Republican convention just as Bill Clinton intends to do for Obama at the Democratic convention. Reid called Bill Frist “amateurish” in his handling of the Senate. Who can dispute that Frist was over his head as majority leader? Back when Alan Greenspan was practically sainted, Harry Reid called him “one of the biggest political hacks” in Washington. Boy howdy, was he ever proven correct about that one! Five years ago, Reid said that Mitt Romney is “kind of a joke” and called the chairman of the Joint Chiefs “incompetent.” I see no reason to revise those remarks today. As for saying that he “can’t stand John McCain,” it’s no secret that John McCain has few friends in the Senate.
I don’t see why giving an honest assessment of people’s capabilities and characters is supposed to be some kind of flaw.
Cracking on Admiral Mike Mullen? Why?
1.) Mullen isn’t the current Chairman, Dempsey is.
2.) he was talking about Peter Pace, not Mullen.
No, on the incompetent who preceded Admiral Mullen.
Excellent writing by Ian Buruma.
go Harry, go!!!
I thought I read here that McCain was Reid’s buddy?
You did, not that they were big buds, but in connection with Reid’s source – that it could be McCain because they associate in the Senate and that McCain hates rMoney – maybe the enmity there is more than with Reid,
Makes sense. Enemy of my enemy.
You got me curious, so I googled Reid calling the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs incompetent.
It was Peter Pace. I would argue that he was only the second worst Chairman of Bush’s Presidency.
I have long believed that, in the Pantheon of Bush-era villains, Richard Myers gets much less attention than he deserves, and really belongs up there with Cheney and Rumsfeld in the top rank. He was the top-ranked, uninformed, career-military figure in the country, and he okayed the adoption of torture practices by the uniformed military – a little bit like how Wilhelm Keitel delivered the honor of his country’s military to his leader. And Myers was one of those nuclear psycho Air Force generals.
I love that Romney’s responses to Harry’s charge that Mitt paid no taxes for 10 years are 1) Did too!, and 2) “Harry should put up or shut up.” Any semi-sentient being who is not fiercely partisan looks at this and thinks, “If he paid taxes, why doesn’t he just show us his tax returns and prove it?”.
Moreover, this has kept Romney’s moneyed status in front of the campaign news all week. On Sunday’s talk shows, Obama surrogates like former Ohio Governor Strickland are getting to say things like “Romney wants us to trust him with the Presidency, but he won’t the American people with his tax returns.” Meanwhile, the Republicans are screaming in complaint like a stuck pig. Bitch-slap politics at its best.