Boy, that didn't take long, did it?
The Washington Post announced Wednesday that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow would be writing a column for the paper once a month, and on Thursday, there was her first piece.
Any guesses on the topic?
Bashing George. W. Bush, of course. What would you expect from this unapologetic liberal shill?
Titled "How George W. Bush Failed The GOP" - clever, isn't she? - the piece rips the former President for not leaving behind members of his administration that have subsequently amounted to anything in the political arena:
In the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, no hearty saplings were ever able to take root in the shade of that big tree. No one expected Vice President Dick Cheney to ever be a contender for the presidency — part of his effectiveness was his willingness to say and do very unpopular things. [...]
But by the time the Bush era was winding down, the whole administration, including the president, was stewed in terrible, Cheney-level disapproval ratings. And now, almost no one who played a significant role in that administration is anywhere to be found in electoral politics, beyond the tertiary orbits of Punch-and-Judy cable news and the remains of what used to be the conservative “think tank” circuit.
Was Maddow ridiculing her own profession sniping at "Punch-and-Judy cable news?"
Maybe more importantly, is she oblivious to former Obama administration officials David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs being employed by the same "Punch-and-Judy cable news" outlet she currently works for?
Alas, this is one of Maddow's strengths: convenient episodes of amnesia.
But here's where it really got funny:
Unlike the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush presidency elevated precisely no one to the ranks of national leadership who wasn’t there before.
I guess Maddow has forgotten that after Clinton left office, most of his administration went to work for the Center for American Progress, a "think tank" started by him and his wife with more former officials from his White House than you can shake a stick at.
Not surprisingly, Maddow didn't bother naming anyone from his administration "elevated...to the ranks of national leadership who wasn’t there before."
Welcome to the world of MSNBC, where you're allowed to say anything you want without having to back up its veracity.
But the laughs didn't end there:
The Obama administration’s ability to nurture and support the next round of national leadership in the Democratic Party is going to be a big part of its long-term legacy. Unless Vice President Biden’s presidential hinting suddenly takes a turn for the serious, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the obvious inheritor of the party’s mantle.
Surely Maddow wasn't suggesting that Obama was responsible for Biden and Clinton's rise to national politics.
More to the point, beyond those two, who in the Obama administration looks like a rising star that could burst on the national scene beyond winding up at Maddow's Punch-and-Judy cable news outlet or a "think tank?"
Maddow listed potential rising stars in the Democratic Party, and only one of them worked for the current White House:
The crescendo of attention to Elizabeth Warren is a healthy part of that process, as is the growing national interest in such diverse Democrats as Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, Cory Booker, Wendy Davis, Martin O’Malley, Deval Patrick, Andrew Cuomo and Amy Klobuchar.
Other than Warren, each of the figures named above made names for themselves without the assistance of the current White House resident.
Is this the kind of poorly-researched propaganda Post readers can expect from Maddow?
As the answer is certainly "Yes," you have to once again wonder why this paper is eager to expand its relationship with MSNBC.
