In a press conference yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow--aka Snowjob--managed to say something insightful, even if he obviously lacks the foresight to see just how ironic it is (see here). Here is an excerpt:
Democracies operate on different principles than totalitarian states. In a democracy, you have to respond to the will of the people. In a democracy within the United States, whether it be Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont competing for votes in Connecticut or on the local level dealing with the needs for people to have safe streets, good schools and services they can depend upon, those are the things -- you respond to the state desires of the people. In totalitarian states, the despot alone has the opportunity to declare what he or she wants to do, and frankly, quite often they are much more war-like.
Of course, as far as it goes, he is entirely correct about the differences between democracies and totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, he apparently fails to see how undemocratic the administration he blindly defends really is.
Consider, for instance, the inconvenient fact that a recent poll showed that 60% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq and that 57% support a time-table for withdrawing our troops (see here). Given that Snow himself explicitly rejected any such time-table in the aforementioned press conference (indeed, the possibility of a time-table is what prompted his lecture on democracy), we can only assume that Snow is an enemy of democracy, a fan of totalitarianism, and a supporter of the world's leading war-mongering despot. After all, given that (a) Snow says that the hallmark of democracy is attentiveness to the will of the people, (b) the will of the people involves a time-table, and (c) Snow rejects a time-table, it follows that (d) Snow does not believe in democracy. Sadly, this surely does not come as surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.
*Cross posted at truth to power
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