Political Irony

One of the things I really love is how the Internet has changed politics, but some people haven’t received the memo. Gone are the days when politicians and pundits could blithely contradict themselves, because now we can just look it up on on the innertubes and point out their hypocrisy. Glenn Greenwald points out a great example, …

You may have heard of Dick Morris. He was one of Bill Clinton’s closest advisors, and nowadays regularly appears on Fox News. So, here is Morris on September 26 (from his Newsmax article “McCain’s Brilliant Bailout Strategy”):

McCain has transformed a minority in both houses of Congress and a losing position in the polls into the key role in the bailout package, the main man around whom the final package will take shape. … Then McCain comes out of the process as the hero who made it happen when the president couldn’t and Obama wouldn’t. He becomes the bailout expert. And, of course, the bailout will work. … Finally, McCain, as the reigning expert on bailouts, then can take the tax issue to Obama, saying that a tax increase, such as the Democrat is pushing, would destroy the bailout, ruin the economy, and trigger a collapse. This bold move by McCain is about to work. Big time.

Ok, fast forward to today in the New York Post. Hard to believe this is the same Dick Morris:

The polls now all indicate an Obama win on Nov. 4; some even suggest a landslide. … Anger over the Wall Street mess has been pushing voters to Barack Obama in droves. And John McCain’s effort to get involved in the solution only hurt him. By suspending his campaign and heading to Washington, McCain made himself a central actor in the unpopular bailout, and thus a target of populist outrage. It also hurt his his effort to show how he far he is from President Bush – there he was, shoulder to shoulder with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Bush and Wall Street.

How stupid do you have to be to believe anyone who talks out of both sides of their mouth like this?