WaPo Hearts J.D. Crouch

Peter Baker of the Washington Post fetes Deputy National Security Advisor Jack Dyer (J.D.) Crouch II for not being Doug Feith:

“We sort of decided that J.D. was the one we would take a harder view of,” said one Senate Democratic staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“But as it turned out, we probably should have focused more on Feith than him. [Crouch] didn’t pan out to be the archfiend that we thought we had on our hands.”

Wow, that’s a ringing endorsement. Baker also quotes John Isaacs at the Council for a Livable World and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy David Trachtenberg to suggest “Crouch has proved more of a professional than an ideologue.”

Baker even mentions that Crouch was “honored as Missouri’s reserve deputy sheriff of the year for pulling an unconscious teen-ager from a fiery car wreck in southwestern Missouri.”

Maybe Baker and Crouch are neighbors or have kids on the same soccer team.

Baker omits any description of the bureaucratic wrangling over the Administration’s North Korea policy or Crouch’s role as Deputy National Security Advisor after the big shake-up. Maybe Chris Nelson will have the inside scoop tonight.

Right wing hack Jim Hoagland recently cited Crouch’s appointment as evidence that Vice President “Cheney is charging ahead with undiminished influence and unshakable self-confidence.”

I’d appreciate some evidence to evaluate these competing claims.

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“That’s his academic hat,” he said. “Part of his job [was] to be provocative. We in academia don’t have any responsibility except to teach our students.”

Some hippie defending Ward Churchill? Nope, William Van Cleave defending J.D. Crouch’s more extreme writings about North Korea and women in the workplace.