Former Washington Post Managing Editor Robert Kaiser took to the opinion pages of the Post to lament the disintegration of the good old days in Washington when political life was wonderfully collegial and lawmakers had fun governing.
Oh, the irony of this Beltway liberal's devoting 2,225 words to decrying conservatives for destroying something that liberals have largely been in charge of for years — government and its growth.
Former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser is retiring at age 70, and he’s very cranky about how conservatives have destroyed government and Washington collegiality. This tells you a lot about what kind of liberal edits and massages the Post every day.
Kaiser is moving to New York, and on the front of the Sunday Outlook he described how “Republicans lost their minds” and “Democrats lost their souls.” In essence, both sides are now too conservative for Bob, starting with a debt-limit vote:
It was only two days ago that one of Charlie Rose’s guests, Politico’s Jim VandeHei, celebrated the disappearance of many outspoken Republicans from the political scene. On last night’s show, Rose invited on a pair of brash Democrats who vanished from Congress recently: former Sen. Chris Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank.
The former lawmakers were there to discuss the 2010 financial regulatory reform law that bears their names. Rose’s third guest, Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, recently wrote a book about the Dodd-Frank Act’s journey from conception to passage. Wouldn't you know it, Kaiser was there to sing the praises of the Democrats appearing on the program, hailing the Dodd-Frank Act as a sort of congressional triumph over partisan politics.
When ultraliberal Henry Waxman ran the House Government Reform Committee, The Washington Post didn't often suggest he was a fierce partisan or ideologue. Instead, former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser praised him in a book review headlined "Moustache of Justice." (The Waxman lovers even have a mug.)
Kaiser cooed, “Henry Waxman is to Congress what Ted Williams was to baseball -- a natural....Waxman has been one of the most effective members of Congress for 35 years....This is the voice of David, whose career has featured the slaying of one Goliath after another.” This is not how the Post is treating Waxman’s "feverish" successor Darrell Issa.
Robert Kaiser, an associate editor of The Washington Post, and a former managing editor (second banana) from 1991 to 1998, bubbled over with praise in a Sunday book review for ultraliberal Rep. Henry Waxman. The headline was "Moustache of Justice."
Robert Kaiser, an associate editor of The Washington Post (and the former managing editor, the vice president of the Post editorial lineup), demonstrated just how much some deep thinkers at the top of the Post think like Code Pink and MoveOn.org in a Sunday Book World review of Andrew Bacevich’s book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser took his usual turn answering reader questions after the State of the Union Monday night, and he seemed eager to echo the Post line that the Bush presidency was "out of public support (32 percent approval), out of ideas and out of gas. It is fascinating to me how difficult it is for politicians (and journalists too, to be fair) to say publicly what so many of them readily say among themselves now: this is a failed presidency, one of the most unsuccessful in American history probably." He also told liberal Post readers that they were right in asking "why should be believe anything we heard tonight?" and asking why the speech was news when "any ordinary person after watching it would turn to his or her spouse and say: ‘Gawd! What a horrible bore.’ He said nothing new and he said it poorly."