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September 23, 2008

Has George Will Gone Native?

Kyle-Anne Shiver & Lee Cary
In a Washington Post article entitled "McCain Loses His Head," conservative columnist George Will hammers McCain for calling for the resignation of Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Toward the close of his piece, Will writes,

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness follows the trek up an African jungle river by a man hired to find a missing agent of a company. Film director Francis Ford Coppola used the storyline in his movie Apocalypse Now. In both cases, the missing man was named Kurtz.  And in both cases Kurtz went native and became one of those who surrounded him.

Has George Will gone native, too?

Will spends his Sunday mornings sitting at the round table on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" along with regulars Donna Brazille (Gore's campaign manager in 2000), Cokie Roberts (daughter of Hale & Lindy Boggs, both Democrat representatives from Louisiana), Sam Donaldson (former ABC News anchor), and, of course, George Stephanopoulos (a prominent member of the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign staff).

In this DNC mix, Will is the token conservative who often sits pensively until given a chance to offer his counterpoint, if he has one, quietly and with limited passion. It's ABC's version of a fair-and-balanced discussion.

After reading Will's WaPo piece, one is left wondering: Has George succumbed to peer pressure from the Liberals of the Round Table?   

Or, is this his payback to the GOP for not making him a journalistic insider during the Bush administration?  Even Woodward got more access than Will.

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