Listening to Josh Marshall sparing with Hugh Hewitt

It's a replay of yesterday's show. Marshall is smooth, not like Peter Beinart, Erwin Chemerinsky or even Michael Medved. They, including Hugh, are all good debaters, as is evidenced by the rising pitch of their voices and the increased pace of their speaking, and the amazing number of details they command. I couldn't think as fast as these guys, let alone spit it out at the rate they do. They all get that tone of exasperation with the density of their opponents, but Josh usually maintains a position of bemused distance from the fray, like a cartoon fighter holding an opponent with a shorter reach away with his hand on the forehead, while the other guys windmills away fecklessly. But yesterday, his voice lost its sonorous modulation and got a little squeaky, as he laughed and kept repeating "You're wrong!" again and again. They were discussing Kerry's vote against authorizing the 1992 Gulf War. When Hugh brought up the point that if Kerry had been president then, Saddam would still be in control of Kuwait and all of its oil, he changed the subject, claiming that Colin Powell didn't support the war either, but he lost his cool when Hugh asserted that, but for our actions and the imposition of inspections, Saddam would have had nukes within another few years.

I like Hugh's show, among other things, because he's so good at puncturing the pretensions of guys like Marshall who think that they have the truth, because they live amidst journalists who never say anything that they disagree with. It's the knowing glance, the arched eyebrow, the slight roll of the eyes most of the time. But when someone like Bernard Goldberg points out the obvious, they react like Masons toward someone revealing their secret signs.