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The Pundit Presidency
Matthew Yglesias — Max Bergmann had the excellent insight that perhaps the key to understanding John McCain’s hysteria-based foreign policy is that it reflects the mindset of a television pundit. And this, after all, is really what McCain has been. He’s not interested in the nitty-gritty of domestic policy that Senators actually have influence over. And he’s hasn’t been serving in the executive branch, where the national security policies that are his passion actually get made. Instead, he spends a ton of time going on television and talking. Max ...

A Crisis-Based Foreign Policy?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Max Bergmann worries: The big concern with a McCain presidency – a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully – is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain’s pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck - either we ...

Descent
Talking Points Memo — A good summary of the danger, from Max Bergmann at DemocracyArsenal ... The big concern with a McCain presidency - a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully - is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain's pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and ...

Why John McCain Would Not Make a Good President
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles — ... democracyarsenal.org: A Pundit Not a President: [O]n almost every crisis or incident over the last decade, McCain has sounded the alarm, ratcheted up the rhetoric and often called for military action - with almost no regards to the practical implications of such an approach. The big concern with a McCain presidency – a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully – is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that ...

8/21: Turning A Corner?
Blogometer — ... linking McCain to Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff (although some wish the ad was running in more places than Atlanta, GA): MCCAIN II: Hysteria-Based Foreign Policy? Echoing the Obama camp's new narrative about McCain's reckless approach to foreign policy, Democracy Arsenal 's Max Bergmann argues that "McCain's foreign policy approach...is rooted in ...

Thank god Matt Yglesias is a dude
pandagon.net - we are the public option — ... It’s been implied that men need to have appropriate and convincing penis-centric reasons for voting for Obama (and for fearing a McCain presidency), so how about not getting our penises shot off in a series of foreign lands? ...

Obama is Not Pundit-in-Chief
Matthew Yglesias — ... Max Bergmann did an excellent post on just this subject last summer, saying that John McCain had a tendency to act more like a pundit than a president. I think that’s exactly right. And today you’re seeing some rightwing pundits getting mad because Obama is acting like a president rather than like a pundit. ...

Quote of the Day: Larison on Obama's Iran Stance
Library Grape — ... Max Bergmann did an excellent post on just this subject last summer, saying that John McCain had a tendency to act more like a pundit than a president. I think that’s exactly right. And today you’re seeing some rightwing pundits getting mad because Obama is acting like a president rather than like a pundit. ...