Brandishing a den Beste link...

...yes, yes, I know, the inhumanity of it all, but hey! I liked his commentary on that IHT article starring Senator Joe Biden and his Amazing Technicolor European Reality Check. Mind you, I'd be somewhat less damning with faint praise than den Beste is about the Democrats and their likely foreign policy positions under an unlikely Kerry administration, but his real hobbyhorse for this essay is the inability of European governments to figure us out, so... actually, I shouldn't tell you to be upset or to be not upset or anything else, really; I'll just say that I didn't find it a waste of time to read the essay and let you decide for yourself. I shall quote one paragraph, and one paragraph only, mostly because it has a good line in it:

But they also discount the fact that, as the IHT article points out, the Democrats don't have any higher regard for European opinion than the Republicans do, and are no more enchanted by the Europeans as any kind of role model. The main difference between the parties when it comes to foreign policy is that the Democrats are willing to smile and nod at the Europeans before ignoring them, whereas the Republicans are more straightforward in expressing their disdain.

A bit lopsided in its snideness, but not completely divorced from reality, I'd say.

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

Hear Hear. :)

The man can write at times. I keep using his analysis of the Iraqi Constitution as a reference.

(Listening to Sandy Denny go off on Who Knows Where the Time Goes....there is an entire world around you and a different one around me and blogging feels weird sometimes)

[Factory]

SdB is rather bigoted when it comes to Europe, so I'd be kind of wary when he tries to talk about Europe, that quote sounds more like projection than analysis.

[praktike]

Den Beste tires me. Not everything can be connected to everything in the universe. He has a problem with (a) being concise, and (b) avoiding loose associations.

[Thorley Winston]

But they also discount the fact that, as the IHT article points out, the Democrats don't have any higher regard for European opinion than the Republicans do, and are no more enchanted by the Europeans as any kind of role model. The main difference between the parties when it comes to foreign policy is that the Democrats are willing to smile and nod at the Europeans before ignoring them, whereas the Republicans are more straightforward in expressing their disdain.

The problem is more that Democrats favor a European-style Nanny State whose unfunded liabilities for social welfare programs are several multiples of GDP more than our own with a more anemic and less dynamic economy that cannot afford to pay for them.

As far as being “willing to smile and nod at the Europeans before ignoring them,” that is something that both parties pretty much do with the Europeans, China, our “strategic allies” in the Middle East, etc. The difference is though that there are actually Democrats who agree more with the EU view on foreign policy than the American one (particularly in their base as we have seen in the primary) and the danger is that they would be part of any future Democratic administration.