Next stop – re-education camp: Bruce Bartlett’s conservative bona fides would appear to be in good order. He was an early proponent of the failed “supply side” economics scheme, who worked in the White House for Reagan and at Treasury for Bush I. He has been a reliable pundit/propagandist on rightwing economic policies for 20 years.
Like many economic conservatives who are principaled, albeit misguided, in their beliefs, Bartlett has grown increasingly disenchanted with the flagrant fiscal irresponsibility of the current President Bush. Now, after writing a book critical of Dear Leader, he has joined the swelling ranks of those who have experienced the sting of retribution meted out by rightwingers to those in their own ranks who dare to suggest that Mr. Bush is anything but brilliant and infallible.
Bartlett recently lost his day job as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a rightwing thinktank in Dallas, after he showed his bosses the manuscript for his new book, “The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.”
Did the White House order NCPA to fire Bartlett? The organization’s president, John C. Goodman, appears to demur:
In response to a question about whether the administration had pressed the organization about Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Goodman relayed a reply through a spokesman saying he had never had any conversation about Mr. Bartlett with anyone in the White House.
It’s always suspicious when someone in Goodman’s position fails to offer a blanket denial. For example, Goodman could have said, “No one encouraged me to fire Bartlett. It was my own idea.” Instead, he says he didn’t have “a conversation with anyone in the White House” about Bartlett.
And here we see another example of the failure of the so-called “libruhl media.” After hearing this obviously dodgy response from Goodman, did the reporter pursue him for more detail: Did Goodman hear from anyone at the Republican National Committee? Or the Senate or House majority leaders’ offices? Or the Texas State House?
We’ll probably never know if pressure from above was applied to Bartlett’s termination. But as is typical of conservatives, the effort to censor him may have had an unintended opposite effect: The headlines about Bartlett’s firing have given the book the sort of free publicity that most publishing houses simply can’t afford to buy.
