Continuing our case study of wingnuttery

After Powerline recieved, no doubt, a whole bunch of email telling them they got their facts wrong in their Jimmy Carter Revisited post, they posted an update, the underlying logic of which is worth looking at.

First, they quote an email from a reader, referring to Carter's alleged attempt to influence the 1980 election, which says correctly that

[Businessman Armand] Hammer had met with other prominent Jewish leaders, Robert Strauss, Carter's campaign manager and Carter at an October breakfast. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about getting out the Jewish vote. Carter asked Strauss, the Jewish leaders and thus Hammer to get out the Jewish vote in response to his efforts with the Camp David accords.

Hammer then meets with Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, whom he knew, and told him this story. Hammer asked Dobrynin whether the Soviet leadership could expand Jewish immigration--and Hammer adds that Carter wouldn't forget such a move (since it would have been in line with longstanding human rights pressure that the U.S. had put against the Soviets since the early 1970s). The idea went no where. Dobrynin never believed that Hammer was acting in any kind of official capacity for Carter or the country--nor did Hammer attempt to give that impression to Dobrynin. Dobrynin in conclusion on the episode: "But as far as I know he was never used by the American government as its representative, and we acted accordingly.…And we certainly never asked Hammer to carry any messages to the U.S. government on our behalf." [p. 466-67, paperback ed. In Confidence, 1995].

Schweizer is not revealing anything new. Newsmax is blowing it out of proportion, and Frontpage Mag is helping by not checking the original work OR the footnotes to see if Schweizer is right. So Carter was not asking Hammer to have Jews immigrate in large numbers to vote for him. Ergo, he was not committing treason.

In fact, the only part of Dobrynin's account that would even give the right anything to think about is Dobrynin's inference that a sentence that Hammer said was said with Carter's approval.

So let's review: Powerline posts two stories about Jimmy Carter trying to influence the 1980 and 1984 elections.  I wrote about the second, but it turns out that in both cases, Powerline, in order to believe their own story, has to rely on a misquoted source, and has to take as truth the inference of an ex-Soviet ambassador. 

Now, surely it should seem problematic to you that someone on the right would be willing to trust an ex-Soviet ambassador, whose credibility is questioned by figures on both the right (Kissinger and Scowcroft) and the left (Brezinski), over the commonsensical idea that a former president probably didn't commit treason. 

But the story doesn't end there.  Though they trust Dobrynin's inference that Hammer was speaking for Carter, Powerline goes on to say:

And I don't necessarily accept Dobrynin's casual assurance that Hammer wasn't regarded as an agent of the Carter administration. For many years, Hammer played an important role, which still may not be fully understood, in U.S.-Soviet relations. From what I know, it would have been entirely reasonable for the Russians to think that Hammer was speaking for Carter, whether Dobrynin now wants to paint it that way or not.

Isn't this classic?  Dobrynin says one thing that they agree with, even though it's just an inference, and so they go with that.  But then Dobrynin says something different that doesn't fit their preconception, so they don't agree with that. 

Is anyone surprised?

As I've said before, my impulse is to think that Dobrynin is exaggerating his influence over all, and is spinning a good old-fashioned Russian fairy-tale in order to sell books.  Powerline, and the right in general, could at least be consistent.  Either they think Dobrynin is a trustworthy source or they think he's not.  Why they can't see this is beyond me.

Well, I suppose it's not.  In order to be consistent, they'd have to also believe that Brent Scowcroft tried to influence the 1980 and possibly the 1976 elections, and that Reagan isn't really responsible for ending the cold war.  I don't think they're about to do that.

Powerline ends their update with this:

FURTHER UPDATE: We had Steve Hayward, author of The Real Jimmy Carter, on our radio show Friday night. Steve said that, based on Dobrynin's memoirs and on documents in the Soviet archives, he believes the anecdote recited by Schweizer about Carter's 1980 overture to the Soviet Union to be true.

Oh, now I'm convinced.  So Mr. Hayward, an American studies Ph.D., reads Russian well enough to wade through the Soviet archives?  Which documents are they?  What do the say?  Can we see them?  Or are they conveniently unavailable?

The point, in case it's not incredibly obvious, is that Powerline, in a move that seems to be all too typical of our colleagues on the right, says that a former Democratic president is "on the other side."  When they're called on it, they don't apologize, nor do they acknowledge that the subject of their anger did precisely what they wanted him to do in the first place.  They find some other evidence to support their "on the other side" claim.  When their other evidence turns out to be misconstrued, they make excuses, saying that they believe the stuff about their source that supports their point of view, but not the other stuff. 

Do you wonder sometimes how it is that the Bush administration could have been so wrong about the WMD?  I don't.

-- Michael

Comments

[Incertus]

They can't apologize, nor can they admit that they got it wrong--it doesn't fit within their "strong father" frame. Or to steal a phrase--better to be strong and wrong than weak and correct.

Of course, it's better still to be strong and correct.

I don't know how you do it--I get ill when I try to go to that website.

[Cheryl]

I noticed that powerline has no discussion, only proclamations. Apparently they are afraid to open their arguments up to question.

So why bother with them at all?

[here's what's left]

i think that's a fair question, cheryl.

for me it's really two-fold. first it's personal. it really bothers me to see such an obviously good public figure attacked.

second, people seem to be talking about it. and any little thing i can do to chip away at their credibility i consider a good thing. who knows, maybe a few wingnuts here and there will realize that they've been wrong all this time. i mean, i'm not holding my breath, but ya know...

[Western Infidels]

"Armand Hammer?" What an unfortunate name.