What Ever Happened To Joe Klein?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an outsider, to not have a reputation to protect or masters to serve or an image to live up to. I've been thinking about these things because I started wondering why some journalists go bad. Take, for example, Bob Woodward. He definies the apex of investigative journalism for multiple generations of men and women brave enough to think they can make a difference by, as Robert Fisk says, watching over the centers of power. Then over the decades and through the celebrity, he got sucked in by Washington's power brokers. Remember, when he and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story they were regular beat reporters. Nothing special. Outsiders. And sometimes that's what it takes to really get inside of an institution. Not connections or contacts or deals, but just the take-no-prisoners attitude of someone with nothing on the line. Today, he is insoucient, vainglorious and unabashadly tied to the hand that feeds him, namely the White House and all the Washington Big Kahunas. Woodward can get access to their lives, but he'll never get the real story ever again. As they say in the intelligent services, he's been compromised.

And that brings me to Joe Klein. Joe Klein was a bit of a hero for me because after he was outed as the annonymous author of Primary Colors, the transparent biography of Bill Clinton later turned into a movie with John Travolta and Emma Thompson, he was fired from Newsweek. Some said he might never work again. Then, the New Yorker's Tina Brown hired him and he went on to write insightful, progressive coverage of Washington politics. And then something happened. He was hired as a columnist at Time. He became bitter to be on the outside, he wanted to be a decision maker and was frustrated that people he thought to be less intelligent or politically acute were getting all the glory.

Today Joe Klein is everything terrible and frightening about John McCain, the most gifted fake-moderate since George W. Bush. On This Week with George Stephanopoulos this weekend Klein advocated including the nuclear option in any potential planning for war with Iran. He then insulted Democrats who are trying to save the world from a nuclear holocaust.

Joe Klein has become a terrible journalist and his column should be taken away. I believe he cares about this country, but I believe he cares about his reputation amongst the powerful more, and that is what makes him unqualified for the profession.