The race to the bottom continues

Between late nights at the office and taking my daughter on last-gasp visits to the colleges that accepted her, I haven’t had time for blogging. But my conservative cousin from New York, a man of leisure, sent me this dispatch about Tom Friedman’s latest column. My cousin writes:

Friedman opines that if there is a choice between a nuclear Iran or an attack on “Iran’s nuclear sites that is carried out and sold by the Bush national security team, with Don Rumsfeld at the Pentagon’s helm” he’d rather live with a nuclear Iran. He likens the Bush foreign policy team to drunken drivers and wants to “take away their foreign policy driver’s license for the next three years.” Friedman believes that if we only had a parliamentary government the entire Bush team would be removed from office. Freidman laments that we can’t remove Bush from office. Instead, he suggests that Bush take a “foreign policy timeout”.

I’m sure that Al Quada will agree to a timeout until we can elect a President who listens to Tom Friedman. As for having a parliamentary form of government, does he really believe that Denny Hastert, Bill Frist and the GOP leadership would be clamoring to remove Bush? I think that Friedman is confusing the Harvard Faculty Senate with the U.S. Congress.

Rather than analyzing whether or not a strike against Iran’s nuclear program would advance U.S. security interests, Friedman’s position is that if Bush does it, must be bad. Doesn’t he realize that the issue is not whether Don Rumsfeld is too abrasive but what is the best way to defeat enemies who have vowed to destroy us?

My cousin’s message is part of his ongoing quest to persuade me that Friedman actually is the worst columnist at the New York Times. I still contend that Friedman isn’t, but you can’t tell from this column.

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