I see that Mr. Douthat and Mr. Yglesias have come to some sort of agreement over the need for realists in Washington. That two otherwise diametrically opposed figures would converge on this point might well signal just how pressing the matter is. Or it could have something to do with how debased the concept of [...]

Check it out:
His onetime rival will also have plenty of leeway to go rogue. The State Department is traditionally hard to rein in, and Mrs. Clinton has insisted she also be free of traditional constraints. She’s demanded the right to staff her department with her own people. And while national security advisers are often more [...]

Fred Kaplan writes on what Robert Gates has brought to the party:
Before Gates, the National Security Council was dysfunctional. Rumsfeld would skip meetings and refuse to let his deputies speak on his behalf. His tag-team partner, Vice President Dick Cheney, would block the NSC from forming a consensus on issues that concerned him; instead he [...]

Chris Caldwell doubts Hillary Clinton’s coercive diplomacy will work after the U.S. has spent so much political capital in Afghanistan (and presumably, Iraq). He writes in the FT (free registration required):
Mrs Clinton tried to explain her vote in favour of the Iraq war by saying that she had expected President George W. Bush to [...]

In case you missed it, this one’s a good read.

Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski advise Barack Obama to reinvigorate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. I agree with their analysis, and in principle with their prescriptions, but what good does it do the United States to get the President involved in a problem he probably can’t solve? Scowcroft and Brzezinski write:
Resolution of the Palestinian issue would [...]

Leaving aside Hillary’s obvious lack of experience in this area — or even the absence of a sense that she is someone who has spent time seriously weighing U.S. interests in light of history and current geopolitics — this choice does seem to confirm Mr. Douthat’s contention that:
On an awful lot of issues, the Obama [...]

As Donadio has noted, it is indeed Hillary. Why? David Frum provides a succinct explanation while neatly eviscerating Bob Shrum’s cloyingly saccharine take:
[B]y circulating her name, Obama makes it difficult for Hillary to say no. Can she afford to be less gracious in defeat than Obama has been in victory? But if she says yes—poof, [...]

Mike Allen reports that Obama’s tapped Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. I’m skeptical of the pick, and I think she’d make a better Secretary of Defense. The military loves her, and it would allow Obama to name the first female SecDef.
Hillary is a fighter. She’s cold, calculating, and remorseless — [...]

I’m having a hard time understanding why Andrew Sullivan still thinks Hillary Clinton should be Secretary of State. CNN has it right, I think, that Bill Clinton’s international business dealings in the past 8 years would compromise her independence.  Obama, you’ll recall, ran on a (now rapidly disintegrating) promise that he wouldn’t have lobbyists in his administration. [...]

At least, that’s what Salon’s teaser link to Camille Paglia’s column of September 10 told me. The second half of Paglia’s latest features a bit more praise for the governor but mostly scorn for those who participated in or stood around awkwardly at the “sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy”:
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate [...]

Via Ross Douthat, Dan Kois at Daily Intel is moved to kinda, sorta defend Sarah Palin against the shellacking she’s still taking in the media, even though the campaign’s over and she’s no longer a threat to world order. But what’s telling about the post is less that New York magazine has come to her [...]

The notion of Obama as the physician who could lance the wound of anti-Americanism in the world began to gain traction during the election cycle, and now with his victory it is really in motion.
Let me be blunt: I think this idea wrong-headed, and possibly even dangerous, in the way that all things that raise [...]

Every time I hear that former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig is being considered for Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, I can’t help but think of this:

I thought Barry O was supposed to be the candidate of change!

Let it never be said that our newspapers have become frivolous.

As pleased as I am about Obama’s election, I am forced to confront what it means for the next four years of Roger Cohen columns. Roger Cohen writing under an Obama presidency is like Nicholas Cage hitting the liquor store in Leaving Las Vegas.
Less than 48 hours since the election and already he drops a [...]

Belatedly, I think Barack Obama’s speech on election night was one of the finest pieces of American political oration in years, and maybe in decades:
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in [...]

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates stays on. I think this is where Obama keeps a Republican in the administration. Gates is a reassuring presence to both allies and adversaries, who see him as a professional, a steady hand and a straight talker. He could provide an important sense of continuity for countries that like the [...]

Here we are thinking, ah, sweet relief, the election is over, and then something like this comes out:
The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.
At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts [...]

Our new executive inherits a heavy burden. I wish him more than luck in carrying it.