Clinton aide: There's always hope that [Bush's foreign policy] might not work

James Taranto analyzes a transcript of Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's “The Daily Show”, interviewing former Clinton aid Nancy Soderberg, who was flogging her new book: The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might. Amazon.com readers who have rated this book, at least at the time of this posting, have assigned it a perfectly mediocre “two stars” (out of a possible five stars). Maybe her time might have been better spent writing a better book instead of promoting dodgy goods.

As an aside, beware of Clintonistas who write books that suggest that Clinton’s refusal to employ American power in response to, say, I don’t know—maybe to al Qaeda’s 1993 attempted destruction of the World Trade Center bombing, was wiser that Bush's use of it in response to al Qaeda’s 2001 successful destruction of the World Trade Center.

OK, Back on topic.

Nancy Soderberg had the bad fortune to write this book back when the conventional wisdom—at least as announced by the MSM—was that everything was going poorly in Iraq and the prognosis, in general, was bad.

Consequently, Soderberg is having to boost a book,

• that is pessimistic about, say, the outcome of Bush’s efforts in Iraq,


• which was released to the bookstores on January 28^th


• and which said release of said pessimistic book is confronted with the successful Iraqi elections of January 30^th

BU-WHA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!

And now this clueless Clintonista is gamely hitting the talk shows—amid MSM reports about successful Iraqi elections, Iraqis protesting al Qaeda death squad attacks in Iraq, Lebanese citizens protesting the presence of Syrian troops and security forces in Lebanon, and Palestinians protesting and homicide bombing in Tel Aviv—discussing how her book explains why Bush should have had more humility and not attempt the impossible and why the sky wouldn’t be falling if Bush had just tried to be as ineffectual as Clinton and saying all of these things when Bush foreign policy garden is coming up with nothing but roses. And the best part is she is (probably) contractually required to make a fool out of herself this way on national TV and elsewhere. Of course I haven’t seen the contract between her and her publisher (Wiley) but I’m confident that it obligates her—in exchange for that advance that Wiley has to be regretting right now—to hit the talk shows and the book signing and pump her book; hence her interview on “The Daily Show”.

OK, all of the above is delicious enough already but wait, there’s more! Jon Stewart managed to get her to admit that the Democrats are hoping for a Bush failure in the Middle East:

Stewart: Do you think they're the guys to--do they understand what they've unleashed? Because at a certain point, I almost feel like, if they had just come out at the very beginning and said, "Here's my plan: I'm going to invade Iraq. We'll get rid of a bad guy because that will drain the swamp"--if they hadn't done the whole "nuclear cloud," you know, if they hadn't scared the pants off of everybody, and just said straight up, honestly, what was going on, I think I'd almost--I'd have no cognitive dissonance, no mixed feelings.

Soderberg: The truth always helps in these things, I have to say. But I think that there is also going on in the Middle East peace process--they may well have a chance to do a historic deal with the Palestinians and the Israelis. These guys could really pull off a whole—

Stewart: This could be unbelievable!

Soderberg: ---series of Nobel Peace Prizes here, which--it may well work. I think that, um, it's—

Stewart: [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He's got, you know, here's—

Soderberg: It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.

Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us. [emphasis mine--johnh

Did you catch that? Soderberg is practically admitting that the Democrats are about to hang themselves over Bush’s imminent success! She basically said that the Democrats only hope is that Bush’s successes in both Afghanistan and Iraq are canceled out by some sort of debacle in either North Korea or Iran—perhaps one similar to the Bay of Pigs debacle caused by Ted Kennedy’s brother.

Also recall Jon Stewart’s prediction that his kid would go to a high school named after Bush. Jon Stewart voiced one of my expectations: that Bush is going to be remembered to be at least as consequential as Reagan.

I have to quote James Taranto’s sensible commentary on this interview:

We've long been skeptical of Jon Stewart, but color us impressed. He managed to ambush this poor woman brutally, in a friendly interview. She was supposed to be promoting her book, and instead he got her to spend the entire interview debunking it (at least if we understood the book's thesis correctly from the very brief discussion of it up top).

She also admitted repeatedly that Democrats are hoping for American failure in the Middle East. To be sure, this is not true of all Democrats, Soderberg speaks only for herself, and she says she is ambivalent ("But as an American . . ."). But we do not question her expertise in assessing the prevailing mentality of her own party. No wonder Dems get so defensive about their patriotism.

Interesting too is Stewart's acknowledgment of his own "cognitive dissonance" and "mixed feelings" over the Iraq liberation. It's a version of an argument we've been hearing a lot lately: As our Brendan Miniter puts it, "The president's critics never seem to tire of claiming that the war in Iraq began over weapons of mass destruction and only later morphed into a war of liberation."

Miniter correctly notes that "this criticism isn't entirely right," but for the sake of argument let's assume it is. What does it mean? President Bush has altered his arguments to conform to reality, while his critics remain fixated on obsolete disputes. This would seem utterly to refute the liberal media stereotype. Bush, it turns out, is a supple-minded empiricist, while his opponents are rigid ideologues.

I have to say, Jon Stewart is a pretty switched on guy for a fellow who makes his living entertaining stoned slackers.

Update:

Mike's America has the background on Nancy Soderberg:

Yes, Democrats are left hoping that either Iran or North Korea will start some trouble or worse... Isn't that pathetically sad? And while we are on the subject of North Korea... wasn't it the Clinton Adminstration that went over there in the 90's and promised them anything if they would just behave??? And it was this same Soderberg woman who was #3 in the Clinton National Security Council and worked at the heart of that Adminstration during it's malfeasance in the conduct of foreign policy.

And of course you know that if Kerry were elected... she'd be right back in there making as big a mess of things now as she, Clinton and Albright did then.

Good background investigation Mike! I have to point out that the Clinton-Soderberg dynamic duo wasn't alone on North Korea; Jimmy Carter worked out the deal on their behalf.