Comments on: There’s No Business Like Foreign Policy Business

By: Captain Hate

Captain Hate — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:37:37 +0000

Only 300? There are still 60 angles to cover.

Amusingly in the NYT article is that maximum wind-tunnel Richard Holbrooke has been shunted off to a non-team-leader status who isn’t part of the “senior working group”. This must be a particularly galling piece of humble pie to somebody who performed the highly improbable feat in 2004 of making the Winter soldier appear to be not the biggest stuffed shirt on the bus. This is what happens when you stitch your fate onto a pantsuit.

By: Gary Rosen

Gary Rosen — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:55:53 +0000

Jay, Roger supports Lieberman. Too bad there is no rooom for him in the Democrat party even though he is in accord on every issue except one.

By: vnjagvet

vnjagvet — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:40:25 +0000

How can 300 people possibly “advise” the candidate. Imagine the amount of face time each gets in a meeting with the Anointed One. Who(m)is he kidding?

By: Captain Hate

Captain Hate — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:02:56 +0000

tess, I can only speak for myself, and as somebody who will probably vote for McCain, he’s far from my ideal candidate in a number of ways. McCain/Feingold is an abomination, his immigration stances have been daft, and I’ve taken a certain amount of pleasure as the Maverick’s MSM buds have stabbed him in the back after being so nice to him when he was such a congenial quote machine and lovable underdog. But my perfect candidate doesn’t exist, at least not in this race. So I have to figure out how he nets out in what’s important to me, flip-flops and all. As I imagine most people do.

By: Annabel

Annabel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:16:02 +0000

Geez Tess, if McCain didn’t change any of his positions over the course of his 71 years, he’d be a reactionary fool. No one expects or even wants their leaders remain rigidly fixed no matter what. But they do expect and need a leader who has a core. Obama does not, or if he does, we don’t yet have any evidence of what it is. He hasn’t been around long enough for voters to know, and what little time he has been around has not been reassuring. Bill Clinton was young when he was elected, but he had a record to be judged on. Obama does not.

By: Barry Dauphin

Barry Dauphin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:15:29 +0000

Perhaps he can call them The 300. Then, some of us might begin to take a second look at his policies toward Persia. (As long as I don’t have to see Dennis Ross in a toga!)

By: Larry J

Larry J — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:43:02 +0000

If Obama needs 300 advisors in a particular subject area, isn’t that proof that he doesn’t know squat about that subject?

By: srlucado

srlucado — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:55:14 +0000

By the way, Roger isn’t exactly alone in wondering why the tabula is quite so rasa…

Jim Geraghty:
http://tinyurl.com/5ccotw

…and what the implications might be…

Charles Krauthammer:
http://tinyurl.com/5u78jd

Some good points, to be sure.

Scott

By: Eric J

Eric J — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:53:08 +0000

300?

“This is madness!”

“THIS IS OBAMA!!!”

Seriously – how is that helpful? Does he have his pollster gather information and give him percentages? How many of them are more than a few degrees off of each other? Are any of them strict contrarians from liberal foreign policy orthodoxy, so he can get non-stawman arguments from the other side?

By: tess mcneil

tess mcneil — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:48:16 +0000

Obama seems like a tabula rasa.

If that be the case, what do you call McCain, who has flip-flopped on dozens of major issues?