American Jews

The New York Times has been a liberal newspaper since Horace Greely took over in the 1850's (I think). On a seemingly unrelated note, political parties in the U.S. are actually coalitions of various interest groups and mini-parties, so to speak. Thus, within the Democratic party you find trade unionists and environmentalists, for example, who disagree on almost everything, as well as most blacks & Jews, two groups who haven't gotten along at all historically. Occasionally one issue becomes so big that it rearranges the parties, or parts of them. For instance, if trade policy became the #1 issue for a long time, trade unionists and free-trade folks would soon find out there wasn't enough room for them in the same party.

Anyway, the New York Times was liberal in the mid-1800's. That is, it was generally pro-Republican. The Republicans, an upstart Western-based party, were pro-Big Government, anti-states' rights, and found support among the middle classes of the North. Somewhere in between Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge the Republicans changed, and the New York Times didn't, remaining liberal, and eventually embracing FDR and JFK, who formed the Democratic Party as we know it.

In the past year and more, international policy has taken a bigger and bigger place in the world of national politics. September 11 ended Bush's ill-advised unilateralism, and his policies since then have been so well balanced that the liberal Times has a hard time criticizing him. (As you all know, news articles aren't really supposed to be biased, but they almost always are, and that's ok, as long as the reader and writer recognize and account for the author's leanings.) This post was prompted by reading in today's paper the phrase "American Jews". A newspaper with a lot of Jewish writers and a ton of Jewish readers, the Times is generally pretty conciliatory to Jewish Americans. However, the recent extremism of the Israeli government, and the jingoistic support by Jewish as well as non-Jewish Americans has gone beyond reconciling with the Times' liberal (and thus Palestinian-sympathetic) stance.

The article, written by Steven Erlanger, is a good one. The uncomplimentary reference to American Jews appears midway through the article: "In Israel there are doubts about how far Mr. Bush is willing to press Israel and the Palestinians toward peace, or whether Washington is simply trying to take the heat out of the crisis through talk of new diplomacy, in order to pacify angry Arab allies, American Jews and the Republican right wing."

While this instance is pretty minor, it's symptomatic of a greater trend in the liberal media to take a non-American stance on the conflict in Israel, and increasingly on other issues. Part of it is being out of touch with the public, which they certainly are, being quite elitist. However, part of it is being in touch with the rest of the world, which the elites are much more than the American public. Different but related is the growing gap between the legislature and the administration. There honestly doesn't appear to be a head-to-head environment in the Beltway this year; it's more of a three-way deal, with Bush et al a separate entity from the House Republicans.

OK, so it's two words in an analytical article in the weekend Times, but if there's a change in political dynamics before the next presidential election you read it here first.