Joe Klein Parts Company with Bush

By Scott Horton

One of the great advantages of living in Pelham, New York, is seeing Joe Klein at the train platform a few times every month. I was a fan of his without knowing his name for some time—I came to it by reading Primary Colors, which may be the best novel of American politics crafted in recent decades. And when I realized that Klein was the author of Primary Colors, it suddenly seemed natural. He had mastered a rare moral voice in his narrative of American political affairs, first at Newsweek and then at Time.

But whereas Klein demonstrated x-ray insight in his scathing analysis of the Clintons, his writing about the Bush Administration has been of an altogether different character. Softer, accepting, always giving the benefit of a doubt. This, perhaps, was Klein in war mode. I never liked it. I always preferred the Old Testament prophet voice in Klein. It struggled to shine through every few months, but I was troubled. It seems to have gone dormant.

Perhaps it is returning. On Friday, Klein published his weekly column at Time by announcing he had turned over a new leaf.

When Bush came to office—installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore—I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration—arrogance, incompetence, cynicism—are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

How does Klein get there? He's following the “big story of 2007”:

the epic collapse of the Bush Administration. The three big Bush stories of 2007—the decision to “surge” in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons—precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys).

So how does Joe see the way forward? It's clear he rules out impeachment. But just about everything short of that is in the cards now.

But I'm looking for something else: a novel that packs as much punch as Primary Colors. Joe, consider it an act of atonement.