Roger Simon, reacting to a very hoity-toity essay on neoconservatism by Francis Fukuyama in the New York Times magazine:

The larger intent of the essay, however, is not professorial, but to announce the political economist’s withdrawal from the N-crowd. Those dreaded neos are, after all, responsible for the war in Iraq and that war, we all know, is a disaster. Well, maybe. Fukuyama not much more than a decade ago announced “the end of history.” In this article he says he was misread on that score and he really meant liberal democracy would lead to the end of history. Again: Well, maybe. Fukuyama seems to be a man in a hurry. The Iraq War here he declares to be a failure after only three years… In my own way, I sympathize with Fukuyama. The opinion game is ruthless. You have no time to wait for history and must make pronouncements based on thin and fleeting evidence. Still, it seems very early to close the book on Iraq. I suspect there are many twists and turns yet to come. Even Germany and Japan took a while to settle down after WWII - and that wasn’t the Middle East. Sometimes I think people like Fukuyama (I’m being mean here) write these things to get their New York Times cards back, to be welcomed home into the fold and not to have to spend the rest of their lives writing for the Weekly Standard. Or worse yet, blogging.

When I was a mere baby political geek, punditry was cool. Other kids aspired to hitting home runs in the World Series or being a movie star, I longed for the day I could opine in a syndicated column, sell books, and make bold, outrageous predictions on The McLaughlin Group after shouting “wrooooong, Eleanor!” You may think this is strange, but there’s actually a whole city full of grownup political geeks, called Washington, D.C..

Blogging has both a boon and a blow to the world of political opining. The Kerry Spot/TKS brought me an opportunity and an audience (and now this lovely hangout), but it has also meant the competition has grown exponentially. When everybody’s a pundit, then nobody’s an influential pundit – or at least it’s harder to break through the cacophony.

And I can’t help but suspect that part of the extraordinarily nasty tone of political debate these days is a reaction to extraordinary competition in what was once the protected field – dare I say, guild? - of punditry. If you’re a top dog with the syndicated column, book deal, regular TV gig, radio appearances, etc., you have to say something shocking and outrageous to remain on the political world’s radar screen. If you’re an up-and-comer, then bland, cautious, safe statements will never get you attention and buzz.

Thus we have guys like Joel Stein saying he doesn’t support the troops, and folks speculating that Dick Cheney’s hunting accident wasn’t an accident. This is what it takes to stand out in the punditry world, to get people reacting to what you write and say, forwarding your column and talking about you. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan diagnosed the phenomenon of “defining deviancy down”; I suspect today we’re “defining outrageous and noteworthy further out.”

Cam: Punditry isn’t worthless, but you’ve hit on one of my pet peeves: people opining about things they know nothing about. Watching the MSM cover the Cheney hunting story was like watching me talk about nanotechnology. They had no idea what they were talking about, and yet they couldn’t. shut. up.

Yes, in order to stay on top you have to stay in the public radar, and yes to get to the top you have to get noticed. That does lead to a lot of idiotic statements (and people like Ann Coulter). But I believe there’ll always be an audience for knowledgable discourse instead of random bomb-throwing.

And if you don’t agree with me, then the terrorists have won.

Marshall adds: I think Jim is on to something here. I was in college — hanging around with a bunch of political science professors — when Fukuyama declared the end of history — on the op/ed page of the New York Times. It was a big deal because he had the megaphone. Now, everyone has their own megaphone. And the way ideas are floated, discussed and transformed has changed dramatically. As Jim says, everyone is a pundit.

And the limited (if annoying) downside of some pundits behaving more like apes seeking attention is more than outweighed by the vastly expanded market of ideas. Indeed, I seem to say a lot that the Internet generally and blogs specifically are the ultimate free market for ideas. The people who can write, frame an idea, make an argument, and support it with evidence and sound thinking, tend to attract readers. The people who suck — like Joel Stein — get ridiculed and lit on fire so many times that no one can (or does) take them seriously. The problem with the old way was that competition among columnists and pundits was limited. And newspaper op/ed editors got to play gatekeepers.