William Kristol wants to put out Sarah Palin fire he ignited = Media Putz for him

Originally published on MediaPutz.com on October 16, 2008

William Kristol

Let’s see if we have this straight: William Kristol, who has had his fingers in numerous Republican disasters in the last eight years yet pretended to have journalistic objectivity, is telling John McCain to “fire his campaign.”

One of the disasters (though not the deadliest — that would be the Iraq War) was pushing for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be McCain’s running mate. While Palin isn’t the only reason why the campaign has stumbled, Palin does play a large part.

But Kristol, whose myopic vision continues to bewilder all life itself, takes no responsibility for his tragic role, and throws out the “Fire the campaign” cry. That will solve everything!!

What makes Kristol’s advice even more funny/tragic is that virtually everything he touches turns to black dust. It would be like still listening to your financial advisor after he told you in July to buy lots of AIG stock.

In the column, his other major piece of advice (other than the irrational firing of the campaign) is to go more negative on Obama, specifically with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. To quote many a Southern politician, that dog won’t hunt.

Kristol acts as if John Hagee wouldn’t get mentioned in return or the witch doctor who laid hands on Gov. Palin.

So how did Bill Kristol find Sarah Palin. Kristol, Fred Barnes, and others were on a cruise for the Weekly Standard that had a stopover in Juneau in 2007. And he was one of the major forces behind the scenes to get her named to the ticket.

And Kristol still thinks highly of Palin, long after other conservatives have literally abandoned ship. Even Kathleen Parker, no fan of what we do, called for Gov. Palin to resign from the ticket.

His call to “fire the campaign” didn’t go over well with the McCain campaign to no one’s surprise. But the reaction from McCain campaign spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer, who used to work for Kristol, was priceless:

“You know, I think unfortunately he has bought into the Obama campaign’s party line.”

To be fair to Pfotenhauer, Kristol isn’t in the tank for anyone but himself. As AmericaBlog put it well:

“Kristol has his own agenda. After November 4th, he’ll be on FOX telling all the diehards how he could have saved the McCain campaign if they’d only listen. Then, Kristol can continue to be one of the wise men in a party that has been destroyed in the elections, because of the ideas of people like Bill Kristol.”

It’s all part of the vicious William Kristol cycle: have a bad idea, tell someone in power, write about bad idea in one of the many outlets he has, see bad idea implemented, say bad idea is still good, then have another bad idea.

And why does Kristol keep going on in the corporate media? Because he is one of them, protected from the notion that he ever has any culpability or ramifications based on things he has said or written. It doesn’t hurt that Kristol is a legacy to the corporate media, given Irving Kristol’s prominence long ago.

Kristol couldn’t get criticized any more than any other corporate media member since their house of cards would get blown away with even a ruffle of a feather.

For pushing a clearly inexperienced vice presidential candidate, and then criticizing the collapse of a campaign in which you used a sledgehammer to knock out a few bricks, and for your continued efforts to be as wrong as one person can be and still get rich doing so, we gladly award you the Media Putz of the week.

William Kristol previously won the Media Putz on July 19, 2007.