MoDo and the virtues of not being able to throw a punch.

I’ve been meaning to highlight this passage from Walter Russell Mead…

One interesting thing about Ms. Dowd’s description of “hardball” political tactics is just how dainty and genteel her brass knuckle suggestions actually are. A speech, an appeal to reason: there is nothing here about lucrative contracts for political supporters, promises of sinecure jobs for politicians who lose their seats, a “blank check” for administrative backing on some obscure tax loophole that a particular politician could award to a favored client; there’s not even a delicate hint about grand jury investigations that can be stopped in their tracks or compromising photographs or wiretaps that need never see the light of day. Far be it from Ms Dowd to speak of or even hint at the kind of strategy that actual politicians think about when words like ‘hardball’ come to mind. Ms Dowd speaks of brass knuckles and then shows us a doily; at some level it speaks well of Ms. Dowd as a human being that even when she tries she seems unable to come up with an offer someone can’t refuse.

…largely to note that this is. perhaps, why I feel kind of sorry for MoDo, some days.  The woman’s just not suited for our modern punditocracy, which rewards people (particularly people on the Left) for their lack of scruples.  And I think that on some level she gets that.

But I only feel kind of sorry, because after all I am myself part of the problem.