Sign "O" the Times

There are two serious deepthink dead-tree monthly foreign policy magazines. The first is Foreign Policy, which is written by and read by people of the most serious credentials and, by and large, the most establishment thinking. The second is The National Interest, which is written by and read by right-wing wackos and their Neanderthal hangers-on.

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If I exaggerate, it isn’t by much.

So with that in mind, read:

The problem is that in seeking to sidestep the pitfalls that plagued Bush, Obama has inadvertently created his own. Yet unlike Bush, whose flaw-riddled first-term foreign policy was followed by important and not fully appreciated second-term course corrections, Obama seems steadfast in his resistance both to learning from his past errors and to managing his team so that future errors are prevented. It is hard to think of a recent president who has grown so little in office.

As a result, for all its native confidence and fundamental optimism, the United States remains shaken and unsteady more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks. Many of its problems have only grown dangerously worse: Its relative influence has declined; the terrorism threat has evolved and spread; and U.S. alliances are superannuated, ineffective shadows of their former selves. Compounding this is such gross dysfunction in Washington that, on most issues, the president is presumed to be blocked by Congress even before he has had the opportunity to make a move.

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The jab at the GOP House feels misplaced, especially as author David Rothkopf seems to have conflated the House with the entire Congress — the Senate half of which is held by Harry Reid’s hyperpartisan Democrat caucus. But let’s chalk that up as a perfunctory nod to Rothkopf’s readership at Foreign Policy magazine. You expect this kind of thing from The National Interest; but from FP it’s an illuminating article for just one reason.

This piece reads as nothing other than the foreign policy establishment washing its hands of Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom.

Welcome to the club. What took you so long?

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