The December 15 Parliamentary election in Iraq was so overwhelmingly successful that it took the New York Times editorial writers two full days to find something nasty to say about it. Not wanting to hold the bad news for the story, the headline writer did his best to explain that the recent election was a non-story, proclaiming:
Iraq Votes for a Third Time
As if Iraq voting is as commonplace as Howard Dean embarrassing himself in public.
The editorial begins with a dire warning:
Iraq’s Election Day was a glorious success. Now on to the hard part.
Were I to research a bit, I bet I’d find that this is the third time NYT has dragged out that sentence after an Iraqi election. It’s their way of saying, “No news is good news.”
Does the Iraqi election, which the paper admits “was an overwhelming and heartening triumph,” vindicate George Bush?
No.
On the contrary, the NYT takes the credit for the success:
This page has consistently stressed the importance of the widest possible Sunni Arab participation in the politics of a new Iraq. Now Sunni voters, keenly feeling the cost of their past election boycotts and less intimidated by insurgent violence, have joined the political process and strengthened their representation in the new Parliament.
The Americans, Brits, Aussies, Italians, Poles, new Europeans, and many Iraqis who died in battle to free that country must, from their places in the great beyond, smile with loving affection upon the heads of grey lady’s editors. For it was the New York Times, not the armies of liberation, which pulled off Thursday’s “overwhelming . . . triumph.”
Perhaps humility caused the Times’s editors to hold this piece a day. They didn’t want to take all the credit. Let that fellow, Bush, enjoy himself before reminding the world that the NYT’s editorial pen is mighter than the commander-in-chief’s terrible swift sword.
UPDATE: I was very busy at work yesterday, so I missed Ed Morrissey’s piece on the NYT’s editorial silence. And a trackback on that brings us to SoCalPundit who tried to find liberal blog commentary on the election. (There is a good comment thread here, too.) The Mudville Gazette has an impressive roundup of blogosphere news on the election. Great weekend reading if all your Christmas shopping is done.