If there was ever any doubt that Chas Freeman is exactly what his critics claimed--an intemperate man with poor judgment and bizarre views, unsuited to the position for which he was selected--we now know that's what he is. Freeman was convicted by his own mouth, and it's good he's not going to be in charge of our intelligence estimates. What's amazing is that the Obama administration signed off on, and Dennis Blair made, this pick.
What's also a bit amazing is that the battle over Freeman, which played out almost entirely outside the view of the mainstream media, seems to have exposed more sympathy for a Walt/Mearsheimer view of U.S.-Israel relations than one might have expected to be out there. People like Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan are now fairly indistinguishable from Stephen Walt and Glenn Greenwald -- and they all defended Freeman less because they were persuaded that he was the right man for the job and more because his critics were (allegedly) "Zionists" and "neocons." That alone was enough to rally much of the left in the defense of a man who is an apologist for the House of Saud and the Chinese regime. That's unfortunate.
The only thing everyone can agree on is that the New York Times, and to a lesser extent the Washington Post, failed to give this story the coverage it deserved. The New York Times didn't have a single report or op-ed on the Freeman debacle prior to today, when the paper reported that he'd withdrawn his name from consideration. Supporters like Sullivan and critics like Marty Peretz commented how remarkable it was that our allegedly major sources of information could have avoided this story for so long. And as Ben Smith points out, the Freeman controversy proves that a story "doesn't need ever to cross into more traditional media precincts to play out with congressional involvement and executive action." The New York Times looks ridiculous, which always makes me happy, but you really have to wonder what their role in our political debates is anymore.
