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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (50219)	6/14/2004 2:36:09 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794015

Some of us here can guess who was included in point four. Daniel Drezner blog. Impressions from the Council on Foreign Relations national meeting CFR meetings operate by Chatham House Rules, so I'm forbidden to attribute any statements made over the past few days to anyone in particular. [Forbidden? C'mon, what could they do?--ed. I lose my privileged position within the vast global conspiracy, and without my steady hand at the till, I don't want to speculate on where world copper prices would be headed.] However, a few impressions came through loud and clear from the flotsam and jetsam of corridor conversations: 1) There is a broad bipartisan coalition of people pissed off at the administration. This is not limited to those involved in this petition (some of whom were at the conference). Those on the liberal side are upset about Bush going into Iraq in the first place. Those in the center are upset with the breakdown of the policy process. Those on the right are upset with Bush for appearing to back down in confronting Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Sadr's militia in Najaf. Across the board, there is dissatisfaction at the way the Bush team has dealt with the allies. At least two people I talked to who helped advise the Bush campaign in 2000 were positively delighted at the political difficulties faced by administration-based neoconservatives [Yeah, but this is just the liberal Eastern Establishment, right?--ed. No, the national members consist of people outside of the DC-NYC axis, and Republicans were fairly represented.] 2) The love for Kerry ain't exactly palpable either. As much fury as was being directed against Bush, many members -- including a lot of Democrats -- were still having difficulty getting enthusiastic about Kerry. To them, the Senator from Massachusetts was just a replica of Al Gore in 2000. Kerry's foreign policy team is essentially Clinton's old team, and even the Democrats there acknowledged that the Clinton foreign policy team was lucky rather than good on most matters outside economics. Part of the frustration was about Kerry's "Benedict Arnold" rhetoric with regard to trade. However, I heard from several sources that Kerry's economic advisors read him the riot act after one of his more populist speeches. One high-ranking advisor told me in no uncertain terms that Kerry wouldn't be using that kind of language any more. Another said that after the "silly season" of the campaign, Kerry would revert to his internationalist bent. 3) It's good to have a blog. Most of the members who attended were a bit hazy on the whole weblog thing. The ultra-competent CFR staff, on the other hand, all expressed their enthusiasm for danieldrezner.com. For which, many thanks.