America's place (and Kagan's and Obama's)

OP-ED: Still No. 1, By Robert Kagan, Washington Post, October 30, 2008; A23

Sender thought I might rebut.

Truth is, I think this was a fabulous piece by Kagan and I agree with it 100%.

Hell, check out my own column this week, and pre-order my book. Stripped of his "league of democracies" notion, which I abhor, I often find myself in very strong agreement with Robert Kagan, whose Dangerous Nation was THE inspiration for my history chapter in Great Powers.

Seriously, an out-of-power Kagan is more than tolerable. He'll quite often be right and the voice of serious reason.

Honestly, my first thought when I saw those pics of Obama reading Zakaria's book, with that title, was, "that's a great way to lose an election."

We are a slightly center-right nation right now, and if Obama loses track of that, he'll be a weak-ass Jimmy Carter in office, especially with all those Clinton-clones hanging around (Bacevich's point in the LAT recently).

(Thanks: Jeffrey Itell)

Comments

[Lexington Green]

If Obama is the centrist president you and many other people think he will be, I will be very, very relieved.

[Seth]

All the “we will change America” or “change the world” might just be rhetorical flourish but that doesn’t sound like a centrist president. Couple that with a large ego and one party rule and it sounds like all the bad parts of the Bush presidency on steroids.

On a different note. One of things that has really gotten under my skin recently is the trend of my fellow Evangelicals to be declinists. Not just internationally but internally as well. I just don’t get it, there are so many good things happening right now. So like usual the left and the right become almost indistinguishable.

[Dean Wakeham]

Obama may be optimistic in is future look, but I think he is labeled as a declinist for comments he makes regarding where he sees America today.

[Our Paul]

Cross posted from OTB, which quoted this post:

I have only two thoughts on this thread: (1) Does anybody think we will someday see McCain carry a book, any book, around? And (2) Given the rampant anti-intellectualism that infects our culture, the title is meaningless, it is carrying a book that is so damning.

Pssssstt to the Obama campaign: Collect dust jackets from different seized Bibles, use them to cover the books that Obama may be reading. This will instantly convert him from a girlyman into a Christian warrior…