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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (25682)	8/1/2006 4:18:09 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541763

Since Bush's political momentum has faded substantially both at home and abroad, there is always a theoretical chance that exhaustion will set in and wiser solutions will be tried. Op-eds exist to put ideas into the Beltway mix, that's all. On a political level, if Bush doesn't change course at all, many people will use the op-eds to say here was a model you could have chosen but you didn't, so now the Republican Party will be held accountable in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Personally, I think Bush and Condi are making it up as they go along ever since the whole "birth pangs" thing went over like a lead balloon. But this crisis doubtlessly has several more acts to follow.

To: RMF who wrote (25682)	8/1/2006 12:12:37 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541763

RMF, In addition to Dale's arguments for the Gelb piece, let me add one more. I see one of the motives, not certain how important, as to place an alternative proposal out so that it becomes a sort of standard against which to measure the present admin's work. That standard becomes a place to which other countries can appeal--as in, "George, look, let's do this rather than that", as a useful critique for future analysis of the Bush foreign policy--as in, "Leslie Gelb wrote this at the time so you cannot argue no one thought of it."