Neoconservative journalist Bill Kristol has a history of being wrong. It isn’t that he’s not intelligent. In fact, he’s brilliant. But his inability to assess situations and see the writing on the wall is what doomed the Weekly Standard, the publication that he founded.
Reports are coming in that the Weekly Standard will likely shut down soon.
Kristol’s heart was usually int he right place. He sees the world through the eyes of someone that wants American exceptionalism to spread. He believes American can be made greater by positioning itself as the world leader in pretty much every situation. He’s never seen a foreign event he didn’t want the United States to engage with in one way or another.
He’s a neocon in a world where conservatives are growing more nationalistic. His interventionist ideology doesn’t fit with enough of the population.
There’s also the fact that many of his predictions have been spectacularly wrong, such as the time when he said, “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.”
Or the time when he declared, “We can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy.”
Perhaps the biggest mistake he made in his rhetoric was undying support for the Iraq War which, today, is seen by a strong majority as a big mistake.
“If we free the people of Iraq, we will be respected in the Arab world… and I think we will be respected around the world.”
Then again, we could also point to his continued opposition to President Trump. From the moment he announced his candidacy until today, he has tried to paint the President as a failure who doesn’t belong in the White House. He may be right, but when your audience in the Republican Party overwhelmingly supports the President, it’s better to be fair than overtly against everything the President says and does.
It’s a shame to see the Weekly Standard go. We need voices in the conversation even if we don’t always agree with them.
