"Too bad you couldn’t do *that* for a living… You’d be very successful at it. You could sell out Madison Square Garden."

Joe Klein, on the other hand, does do it for a living. Klein, discussing the NSA program, rolls out his usual “let me project my increasingly reactionary politics on the American public so I can pretend the Dems are losing because they disagree with me” shtick:

In fact, liberal Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on these issues as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo’s family in the right-to-die case last year.

The actual data:

56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

Whoops! (Conversely, upwards of 80% of the public opposed the Republican position in the Schiavo case.) Klein’s explanation:

I suspect that a strong majority would favor the NSA program as well, if its details were declassified and made known.

I see. So in spite of the fact that by definition we can have no way have knowing how this arbitrary, unchecked presidential power has been exercised, and the fact that the President’s belief that we couldn’t pass even the perfunctory FISA warrant process makes it utterly illogical to believe that he was simply eavesdropping on terrorists, if the public knew what Joe Klein doesn’t know I’m sure they would agree with Joe Klein! Just like I’m sure they’d agree with Joe Klein about social security if they only knew that the loss of private sector benefits means that we should use public policy to exacerbate economic insecurity–it’s a new economic age!

What a maroon.

…Ezra gets this right:

And that’s what makes Klein’s column so ugly. Beneath the artfully chosen language and “even-a-liberal-like-me” pretense, his base contention is this: the president has an unlimited array of powers that require neither statutory authority nor independent oversight, and Democrats would be wise, on pain of electoral loss, to leave this state of affairs unquestioned. Of course, this advice, if followed, would surely not prevent Klein from writing a column in late November of 2006, crucifying the cowed, beaten Democrats for lacking the courage of their convictions and losing the election because they stood for nothing. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and Klein has no need for such constraints.

This is exactly right. You can never sell out enough for the Kleins of the world, and the sooner Dems realize this the better.