November 02, 2005

The President's Daddy Issues

Last weekend I finally got around to reading Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on Brent Scowcroft in the October 31, 2005 issue of The New Yorker. It's an interesting article. And Scowcroft comes across as a sort of uber-Realist who obviously has a deep affinity for the writings and beliefs of Hans Morgenthau. Consider just the last four sentences.

"I believe in the fallibillity of human nature," Scowcroft told me. "We continually step on our best aspirations. We're humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will."

It's no coincidence that Goldberg describes the first Bush administration's involvemnet in Somalia (a decision made when Scowcroft was serving, for the second time, as National Security Advisor) as a time when "the United States acted selflessly out of self-interest". That's clearly how Scowcroft saw, and justified, that decision.

The article provides brief glimpses of other foreign policy leaders as well, including Richard Holbrooke (who I think comes off very well) and President Bush (who comes off, yet again, as petulant). The President appears to be a big fan of Natan Sharansky's book The Case for Democracy (predictable, but something which should give us pause). Sharansky recounts a story in which he tells the president to "say hello to your mother and father", and the president reacts as if he's shocked given his father's "Chicken Kiev" speech. The way Sharanksy tells the story it appears that our president 1) has no respect for simple courtesy, 2) favors huge idealistic actions as opposed to working with today's realities, and 3) knows depressingly little about how his father conducted foreign policy, 4) is a big believer in holding grudges and 5) really might want to be seen as greater than, or accomplishing things, that his father could not.

Some may argue that I'm reading too much into Sharansky's comments, but that's my read on them. And sadly, there's plenty of evidence in his behavior over the last 4 years to suggest that these are set characteristics of the man who's charged with leading our country for more than 3 more years.

Posted by armand at November 2, 2005 11:26 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


Comments

I read Sharansky. Sharansky's no deep thinker. Very simply, his book argues that Democracy will cure all dictators (and make everyone, everywhere, better off). Sharansky's got a very laudable personal life, but his political theories are just this side of insane.

Posted by: baltar at November 2, 2005 12:04 PM | PERMALINK
Post a comment









Remember personal info?