Matthew Cooper, now over at the Atlantic after a brief stint at Talking Points Memo, uses Marc Ambinder’s blog to attack my colleague Steve Hayes for “buffoonery,” for not being “genial,” and for impugning the president’s motives vis-Ã -vis Iran:
I don’t know how you respond to a guy who used to work at TPM complaining that certain writers aren’t genial enough, but with regard to Cooper’s claim that there is nothing in this administration’s record which suggests they “want to uphold the Ahmadinejad regime,” I have seen some contradicting evidence. I direct Cooper to the twitter feed of one Marc Ambinder, who reported on Saturday night that “White House officials say they worry about the stability of Iran during a protracted post-vote period of uncertainty.” At the time, I thought this can’t possibly be true — worrying about the stability of Iran on Saturday meant they were worried about how to “uphold the Ahmadinejad regime.” So I asked Ambinder, “Aren’t we for regime change/collapse in Iran?” His response: “The last guy was. This guy ain’t.” Cooper concedes throughout his post that he “wouldn’t claim to know how best to influence the situation in Iran,” and “won’t claim to understand Iranian politics well,” so I would suggest in as genial a manner as I know how that he ought to read his colleague Marc Ambinder’s very well regarded reporting before he starts writing TPM-style partisan hits on Ambinder’s blog.
