Norman Podhoretz, one of my heroes, pays me the honor of citing with approval something I wrote on Power Line. In his latest article for Commentary, “Is the Bush Doctrine Dead,” Mr. Podhoretz quotes me in the context of my support for the president’s nuanced approach to the promotion of democracy:
Paul Mirengoff of the blog Power Line, taking account of the role of prudential judgment in a variety of countries with differing circumstances, does a good job of defending Bush’s record in this area against his neoconservative critics
Podhoretz then cites this statement from Power Line:
In each instance, the administration tilts toward democracy, with the degree of the tilt dictated by its perception of our ability to control events and the viability of the status quo. . . . In short, the administration’s policy in the Middle East is to attempt to promote democracy to just the extent that doing so makes sense in light of facts on the ground. Since these facts vary from situation to situation, so too do the manifestations of our policy.
There’s some irony here because, in the aftermath of the Lebanon cease-fire agreement, I can perhaps be viewed as one of those conservatives who, to Podhoretz’s disappointment, has become disillusioned with the president’s foreign policy to the point of “composing obituary notices.”
I highly recommend Podhoretz’s piece, which I hope to discuss in the near future.
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