Alter’s Embarrassment
“Jim Jeffords was having trouble sleeping at night, muttering over and over, ‘The children, the children.’”

May 30, 2001 2:05 p.m.

im Jeffords was having trouble sleeping at night, muttering over and over, `The children, the children.' His conscience was bothering him like it always does when he is confronted by evil: The billions of dollars of new education funding in the Bush budget just wasn't enough. `When I had nightmares about kids being left behind, that was just the breaking point for me,' Jeffords told Newsweek in his soft voice, gentle and serene like a pristine Vermont stream. It was then that Jeffords — who is kind to children and small animals, but has a black belt in tae kwon do; who likes poetry and walks on the beach, but is comfortable in Washington's corridors of power; who is shy and shuns the spotlight, but has a magnetic pull on the ladies; who is the ying and yang, the Alpha and Omega of American politics — first made his resolve: He would just have to kick some right-wing butt."

This was not the lede in Jonathan Alter's Newsweek piece this week on Jim Jeffords, but it might as well have been. Alter delivered the most embarrassing suck-up imaginable, a piece that could have been drafted by Jeffords's press secretary, that is, if he or she didn't have any shame. Alter opens with an anecdote about Jeffords waking up at night screaming, "Watch out! The machine guns are firing!" This nightmare was not a flashback, but a dream about the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton! Alter then goes on to catalogue how Jeffords has always been Erin Brockovich, Ralph Nader, and John McCain rolled into one, a paladin of political virtue not seen since Solon. Alter never bothers to square Jeffords's long-running ideological estrangement from the GOP with the idea that his switch represents a specific problem with the Bush White House, but why should he? It might distract him from his long recitation of tendentious clichés.

Amazingly, Alter barely even mentions the minor matter of Jeffords apparently securing a committee chairmanship in exchange for his act of high principle. He deals with it only obliquely and dismissively: "The White House is spreading the word that Jeffords's decision was about committee perks. That spin wasn't playing, because it doesn't square with the senator's reputation." But it's not just "spin." Tom Daschle has pointedly refused to deny that Jeffords will get the Environment and Public Works Committee chairmanship, and the fact has been widely reported elsewhere. But Alter prefers to ignore it, lest it detract the least bit from his St. Jim storyline. Then, he takes John McCain's assertion that the GOP needs to "grow up" as an established fact. "But will it?" Alter asks, in his probing, no-rock-will-be-left-unturned way. He obviously doesn't think so. Alter has some gall, because the only word to describe his credulous, unimaginative, and utterly predictable piece is "juvenile."