Hitch versus Joan Walsh in "Heated & Personal Debate" re: Obama's Foreign Policy Team

Huh.  This was curiously entertaining, like anything featuring Christopher Hitchens,  the winger we most hate to love (and vice versa.) 

Tweety reckons that Obama has picked people "to the right of him" to cover for him.  Hitch points out that Petraeus is not a right-winger and that Rice argues for humanitarian intervention.  Tweety thinks Hillary is a "notch" to the right.  Hitch says it doesn't matter, left or right, because Hillary only cares about herself blah blah blah.  Sadly, he's still one of the few right wingers who sounds like he might have a point even when babbling abject nonsense.  (See "right wing" Hillary's record here and here).  What a crock.  But even his shallow and ridiculous "debunking" of religion sounds convincing on the surface if you don't have the facts at your fingertips.  This makes him one of the few right wingers we genuinely enjoy and not only for the opportunities for mockery they present.

Walsh is, as ever, far more just and correct than Hitch, but the magic of Hitch is his ability to put others in the wrong via ad hominem attacks and cruel asides.  Anyway it gets pretty intense.  Or, as HuffPost puts it, " Slate's Christopher Hitchens and Salon's Joan Walsh battled over the wisdom of Obama's choices, a debate which grew heated and personal."

Or, as Wonkette says:

It’s just the drunk anger troll pissing off the nice lady. Ha ha, it is amazing how much Christopher Hitchens hates the Clintons. He hates them more than Andrew Sullivan does.

You'd think Hitch would be as happy as some right-wingers are pretending to be---though as Jason Linkins points out, there is a certain note of disingenuousness.   Whereas Perle thinks Hill will continue neocon policies---oh, REALLY---"Hillary the Hawk" is pretty much a fiction being used to poke at nervous progressives, i.e., those who grabbed hook, line, and sinker onto right-wing rhetoric during the primaries.

By and large, I see this cheerleading from the right as being mostly denialist, it's larger purpose being the sort of goading that goes on between both sides of the partisan intelligentsia. Talking down the prospects of forthcoming "change" is precisely the sort of thing that will rile up the left-wing blogosphere. Whether or not this deflates the hopes of voters is another matter entirely. This sort of chatter flies entirely over the heads of people who recognize a shift from incompetent to competent governance as "change." That said, I'd beseech Richard Perle to be patient. Before long, he's likely to find plenty of grounds to object to Hillary Clinton. An example of why can be found in David Sanger's New York Times piece, "A Handpicked Obama Team for a Shift in Foreign Policy."

Like most of the HuffPost crew, Linkins has fallen for the Hillary-as-more-Hawkish-than-Obama (which:  no) line of crap, but he is fully on to the motives of those right wingers who are pretending to be so very relieved that Obama's picked scary right wingers to run foreign policy.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary...have embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena.

The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states....

The adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three have all embraced "a rebalancing of America's national security portfolio" after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years.

None of that strikes me as anything even remotely resembling a perpetuation of "the foreign policy approaches that have typified Bush's second term."

I'd also add that some extra significance should be placed on Perle's criticism of Chuck Hagel and the other "mostly Republicans" that he "wouldn't be happy about." Hagel still likely looms as influential in Obama's foreign policy formulations, as does another Republican, Brent Scowcroft, who seems to have Obama's ear in this arena.

And the idea that Hillary will secretly work against Obama---who can permanently bench her by throwing her out on her ear---is just absurd and simply a way for wingnuts to have a go at Obama by implying that he is too weak to control his staff.

I don't think so.  Obama is a  political machine.  He's Mr. Spock.  His campaign ate the Clintons' for breakfast.   Nobody is going to be making any moves that aren't in line without his say.  Which is as it should be.

Anyway, reach your own conclusions about this nonsense.  We'll soon see.

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