More Friday Crackpot History From BoBo

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks laments the fact here that this country apparently can no longer lead the world on the most critical issues faced by this planet (as he sees it, of course), and in the process, finds himself longing for government leaders such as Harry Truman, George Marshall and Dean Acheson…

“…people have looked at the way (these three men) and others created forward-looking global institutions after World War II, and they’ve asked: Why can’t we rally that kind of international cooperation to confront terrorism, global warming, nuclear proliferation and the rest of today’s problems?

The answer is that, in the late 1940s, global power was concentrated. The victory over fascism meant the mantle of global leadership rested firmly on the Atlantic alliance. The United States accounted for roughly half of world economic output. Within the U.S., power was wielded by a small, bipartisan, permanent governing class — men like Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, John McCloy and Robert Lovett.

Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

Ah, so it’s all the fault of that darned “cultural diversity,” then. How astute! How about the fact that we have endured a void of adult executive leadership in this country for the last eight years under almost exclusively Repug “governance”?

And this isn’t the first time that Brooks has invoked the name of Acheson, as noted here (to say that an utter sycophant like Our Gal Condi Rice has anything in common with the man who helped formulate the “flexible response” foreign policy of JFK, as well as serving as one of LBJ's “wise men,” is pretty funny; Acheson also won a Pulitzer Prize in history writing for his memoir of his time in the State Department).

It is also amusing to consider that Acheson faced ridicule in 1949 for somehow preventing the communist takeover of China, as if we could have stopped that, with Brooks’ ideological predecessors leading the charge.

Brooks also tells us (concerning what he considers the ill effects of missing Acheson)…

And so the globosclerosis continues, and people around the world lose faith in their leaders. It’s worth remembering that George W. Bush is actually more popular than many of his peers. His approval ratings hover around 29 percent. Gordon Brown’s are about 17 percent. Japan’s Yasuo Fukuda’s are about 26 percent. Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi have ratings that are a bit higher, but still pathetically low.

I don’t know where BoBo got that 17 percent number for Brown, but this tells us that Brown’s Labor Party has a 28 percent approval rating (close enough – I’ll bow to Brooks on that). However, though Sarkozy has dropped off as well (guess that “my way or the highway” rhetoric didn’t go over so well the land of haute coutoure), he still maintained a 33 percent approval rating here. Meanwhile, our buddy Uh-Oh Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a 50 percent rating here, and Angela Merkel of Germany, according to this story, is enjoying her highest ratings ever.

Brooks also tells us…

The best idea floating around now is a League of Democracies, as John McCain and several Democrats have proposed. Nations with similar forms of government do seem to share cohering values. If democracies could concentrate authority in such a league, at least part of the world would have a mechanism for wielding authority. It may not be a return to Acheson, Marshall and the rest, but at least it slows the relentless slide towards drift and dissipation.

Actually (as noted here), McBush’s “League of Democracies” is a pretty dumb idea, and actually kind of funny when you consider that the Repugs and their acolytes are the ones always railing against the U.N. (soo...I guess having their own “league” will make them happy then?). It also would be nice if BoBo would tell us which Democrats support this half-baked idea, since I couldn’t find any.

Suppose for the sake of argument, though, that we form this league that McBush wants full of nations we like. Well then, suppose there’s a problem with a country we don’t like that isn’t in our little league? Are the other member countries of our league supposed to join in any action against that supposedly baaad country? Or, if a country in our league decides they don’t like a country not in our league, are we supposed to help them if they decide to take action against a country they don’t like?

With all of their imperfections, the U.N. and N.A.T.O. exist for a reason. Respect it and work within their frameworks to resolve differences, OK? After all, Brooks’ hero Acheson was the “main designer” of N.A.T.O., as Wikipedia tells us.

And by the way, BoBo, your hero Acheson refused to turn his back on Alger Hiss, accused as a spy by that upstart Repug congressman from Whittier, California named Richard Nixon many years ago. You, however, wrote glowingly of Whittaker Chambers, Hiss’s accuser, here. Try to reconcile that, if you can.