The New Republic never stops embarrassing itself. Now they are publishing Eli Lake:
And, while it’s easy to dismiss the conservative critique of Obama’s foreign policy as a politically motivated caricature, you can see why McCain supporters have tried to tag him as a latter-day Jimmy Carter. During the primaries, Obama talked about the war on terrorism with the fastidiousness of a civil libertarian–emphasizing the constraints that he would impose on our military and CIA and rarely mentioning specific methods for prosecuting it. He has, for instance, talked extensively about closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending the policy of extraordinary rendition.
Fastidiousness? Lake goes on to lay out a case that Obama’s foreign policy will be more like Ronald Reagan’s than Jimmy Carter’s. Why? Because Obama won’t let human rights violations prevent him from partnering with the enemies of our enemies.
There’s an argument that Jimmy Carter was a little too fastidious in this regard, but there is also an argument that Ronald Reagan went too far in the other direction. What Lake actually argues is that Obama will split the difference. And that would be fine by me. But Lake only makes this argument reluctantly, after praising Reagan and attempting to tie Obama’s policies to William Casey’s.
