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EGOIST ANONYMOUS Joe Klein and wife Victoria at the world premiere of the movie adaption of his book Primary Colors

Mercifully, that was Klein's last comment on the issue before issuing a correction acknowledging that "the bill does not explicitly say" what he said it says (though Time stupidly posted a correction online that was weaker, claiming only that there was a partisan dispute, resulting in a correction to the correction).

It's that sort of unrestrained ego that has turned Klein's foray into the world of blogging into what has become, essentially, a yearlong self-immolation. His style is suited—if it is suited to any kind of journalism—to the sort of self-inflating pronouncements that Time's print edition encourages. To wit: In June, Time published a feature called "The Courage Primary," wherein Klein laid out his political program, chock-full of policy prescriptions swaddled in mawkish and content-free bromides that would make Dan Rather, he of the "courage" sign-off, proud.
Combine his posturing style with a vanishingly thin skin, put it online, and you get the periodic hissy fits that have seized Klein since he started blogging
"[O]ccasionally, there comes an election where the ability to be courageous, to tell the public things it may not want to hear, is the most important quality we need in a leader. I suspect that 2008 will be that sort of election." The piece amounted to a primer on The Joe Klein Primary—a guide to the candidates on how to get his support, with the implication that divergence from his prescriptions constituted cowardice. Fine. He's a pundit. That's what they do. But the penultimate paragraph offers a window into a mind that has been blinded by self-regard: "As I've thought about these issues, a pattern has emerged: They are synergistic, mutually reinforcing. They fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. ... When you put the jigsaw puzzle together, the nation that emerges is more equitable, more efficient, with a reinvigorated citizenry—a safer and more powerful nation, braced by the power of moral example as well as military supremacy." Huzzah! Can you make the nation more equitable, efficient, safe, powerful, and invigorated in 4,300 words or less, Glenn Greenwald? I didn't think so! When Klein writes about the courage necessary to lead the country out of its current quagmire, he's thinking of someone in the arena, amid the blood, sweat, and dust. And it's not one of the candidates.

Combine that posturing style with a vanishingly thin skin, put it online, and you get the periodic hissy fits that have seized Klein since he started blogging. In June, he wrote a column called "Beware the Blogger's Bile," which recounted an episode in which he reported—falsely—on Swampland that Rep. Jane Harman had voted for a bill to fund the Iraq war, and was "blasted by a number of left-wing bloggers: Klein screwed up!" The lesson, Klein argued, was that "a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance ... has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere." True, except—Klein did screw up! Harman had misinformed him about the way she was going to vote, so it was an understandable error (though one that a check of the Congressional Record would have avoided). But is the time you got something wrong, and the left-wing blogosphere correctly (if rudely) hammered you about getting that thing wrong, really the best set of facts with which to make your case against the left-wing blogosphere? As with the FISA case, a simple "I made a mistake" would have sufficed.

In a bizarre and revealing podcast that Time posted on Swampland as a companion to the column, Klein railed wildly against the insolence of those who dared to criticize his reporting, repeating four times that he'd been doing this for 38 years, which is apparently long enough to have earned the right to be wrong without people hassling you about it. In the space of 10 minutes, he bragged about how he "[hasn't] called the White House in years" to deflect criticism that he spouts the Administration's line, and then criticized Greenwald for failing to call him. Referring to the Harman error, Klein said, "[T]his is a war we're talking about, and I don't really care about these stupid little details. ... The important thing here was my feeling that voting against the war funding was a bad idea." As with the FISA column, the way Klein felt was important; the factual error he made in advancing his argument was a stupid little detail.

The subtext to Klein's blog tantrum is the galling fact that his attackers are coming from the left. Klein wrote a biography of Woody Guthrie, for Christ's sake! Don't his attackers realize that he's a liberal? That he hates Bush as much as the next guy? That he's Joe Klein?

In a couple weeks, for his year-end column, Klein will distribute his "Teddy Awards," which he does every year in a tip of the hat to public figures who have "performed honorably as winners and losers in the public arena," and, per Roosevelt's stirring words, honor those who, if they've failed, have done so while "daring greatly."

Past winners have included George W. Bush and David Petraeus; it's anybody's guess who'll get the nod this year. But I know who Joe Klein really wants to give it to.

Photo: Vince Bucci/AFP/Getty Images