Arianna Huffington is a large disappointment, in every way. She portrayed herself as a ‘progressive’ voice for women and a politics no longer mired in the thickets of the left/right political inertia. But what the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL has revealed is the real scope of her personal ambition and it’s breathtaking. Her stated goal and that of her partners was to provide a platform for the election of a Democrat to the presidency, by providing an alternative, a Democratic alternative to the right wing propaganda machine. In that Ms. Huffington and her partners have succeeded but the Democrat elected resembles in his Neo-Liberal policies and political timidity, Bill Clinton, i.e.  at the least a rehearsal of the bankrupt New Democratic imitation of Reaganism: is this a definition of success?

Ms. Huffington paid her core staff and relied on ‘citizen journalists’ who worked for free, providing content for site, adding a certain ‘progressive’, ‘egalitarian’ tone  A move probably inspired by one of her revered teachers, Milton Freedman. Does that even meet the basic standard to call ones endeavors ‘progressive?’.  Ambition of the scope Ms. Huffington has exhibited to be a political power broker and taste-maker has no peer in contemporary America ,but the career of Clair Booth Luce can provide a rough template, although imperfect- the biography of an out-sized ambition.

Cato