Kerry's neo realism

Tacitus:

I've been reflecting a bit on John Kerry's proclamation that, if elected, he's not going to be much of a pro-democracy President. It's an extraordinary thing for a candidate to say: most at least give lip service to the notion. Even Clinton, as others have pointed out, was liberal, if ultimately insincere, in his denunciation of the "butchers of Beijing" in the '92 campaign. This sort of thing is de rigeur rhetoric, and breaking from it is rather extraordinary.

Two things come to mind.

First, you're shortly going to see a great many Democrats rush to praise Kissingerian, nay, Nixonian realism in foreign policy. In doing so, many -- probably most -- of these same Democrats will make egregious hypocrites of themselves. However, the memory of seeing a mass of them rise up and endorse a lack of core principle in foreign affairs (beyond that, of course, elucidated in Machiavelli) should be a handy rhetorical silencer for at least the next couple of election cycles. The irony, of course, is that the "realism" they must now endorse is deeply unrealistic.


Tacitus goes on to find an old quote where Kerry suggest just how unimportant democracy is to him. If George Bush had said something like Kerry the left wing nuts would be even more paranoid. Read it all.

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