Hugh Hewitt Wonders
New Sisyphus
The irreplaceable Hugh Hewitt, whose fantastic book "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It" presaged the disaster in the Washington's governor's race discussed below, asks:
"How in the world did New Sisyphus and Diplomad make it past the entrance examiners and into the State ranks?"
We yield to our much more experienced brother in the Far Abroad to answer this in any detail, but we can say, despite limited experience to date, that there appears to be many more conservatives at State than one would think.
As a profession which requires living in places dramatically different from the United States, it appears to us to have a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) conservative effect on one's cast of mind, as the illusions and fantasies of how the world works are stripped away and replaced by the cold, hard reality. For example, most liberal opposition to the Iraq War that we have encountered in our fellow officers isn't the typical Michael Moore drivel; rather, it is often driven by a world-weary belief that the U.S. simply can do no good in the Middle East because no good can come from there, ever. There tends to be a ideological sympathy for the President's call for greater democracy in the world, but it is overwhelmed by bitter experience. These officers tend to see the President's policy not as criminal, but as foolishly naive and over-romantic. In our worst moments, we cannot say we completely disagree.
However, the fact is, even the most liberal FSOs we know know, for example, what The Diplomad has so recently brilliantly documented: that many international organizations and other regional organizations are hopeless and it's really the U.S. and its Anglosphere cousins that do the real heavy-lifting. This has an effect on one's worldview.
The next four years under Secretary Rice promise to be exciting and interesting and we would not be at all surprised to find the Department more conservative at the end of the day.
A quick anecdote to illustrate the general point: A while ago there was a debate sponsored by an organized group of current and former FSOs between Richard Perle and Richard Holbrooke, who was at the time widely expected to be the next Secretary of State. The topic was the President's foreign policy, the War on Terror and the Iraq War. After the debate, a secret poll was conducted to see who the audience--all State folks--thought had won.
Richard Perle won handily.
# posted by NewSisyphus @ 1:07 AM
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