The Washington Post isn’t nearly as left-leaning as those who don’t actually read it presume it to be. But every once in a while someone has a bad day. (It happens here, too.)

Jeffrey Smith must have been having a bad one when he wrote this gem, which has been sitting on the get-to file for a few days now: “Bush Counfounded by the ‘Unacceptable’.”

Smith is worked up by the way the President has used the word “unacceptable” with increasing frequency. And he’s gone to the trouble of combing through speeches to find examples. He starts off with the classic “at a time when"* trope: “Bush’s decision to lay down blunt new markers about the things he deems intolerable comes at an odd time, a phase of his presidency in which all manner of circumstances are not bending to his will,” Smith writes, before proclaiming:

[T]he president’s worsening political predicament has actually stoked, rather than diminished, his desire to proclaim what he cannot abide. Some presidential scholars and psychologists describe the trend as a signpost of Bush’s rising frustration with his declining influence.

In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes “unacceptable” or “not acceptable” as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable.

And so on. There’s nothing factually incorrect about the piece, and it doesn’t hurl invective, aside from saying the president “hurled the term ‘unacceptable’ at actions by Iraqi insurgents,” etc. But the piece is so dripping with contempt for Bush that it really should have come with a wet-nap.

p.s.—The article was a fine bit of writing, qua writing. It ended with this graf: “Bush’s proclamations are not the only rhetorical evidence of his mounting frustrations. One of his favorite verbal tics has long been to instruct audiences bluntly to ‘listen’ to what he is about to say, as in ‘Listen, America is respected’ (Aug. 30) or ‘Listen, this economy is good’ (May 24). This year, he made that request more often than he did in a comparable portion of 2005, a sign that he hasn’t given up hope it might work.” Smith doesn’t conclude, “. . . even though he really should abandon that hope,” because by the end of the piece, the reader has reached the same conclusion. Nicely done.

p.p.s.—Still, it was a nicely done column, parading as news. The Post didn’t even slap the “news analysis” fig leaf on it. Sheesh!

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* The rhetorical device of “comes at a time when” is a kissing cousin to “comes from the same people who,” and sets up an implied contextual rebuff. (E.g., “The president’s upbeat speech on the economy comes at a time when food pantries and homeless shelters across the country report a sharp uptick in business. . . .")

Makes me proud that our Times-Dispatch is so careful to separate news from opinion and label each.  I was expecting the endorsement of George Allen by the paper, yet I couldn’t keep from hoping---

The article on Webb on the front page was a good example of balanced reporting.

Wow. You’re right.  That is a bit too far for any “news outlet”.

That being said, it is a good piece of writing that probably has a nugget or two of truth in it.  But it belongs on the Op/Ed page, or in the Nation or a similar venue for opinions.

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