July 15, 2006

Lunch with Frank

The FT sits down w/ Francis Fukuyama.

Excerpt:

Till now we had mostly avoided the visceral issues that divide Washington, but I was curious to hear what Fukuyama thought of George W. Bush. I asked if he had heard of the British tabloid headline that appeared the day after Bush’s re-election: “How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?” Was that fair?

“I didn’t vote for Bush,” he said. “But I think there is an unfair caricature of him in Europe. Bush is broad-minded on a lot of issues, such as trade and immigration. Even in foreign policy his presentation was in many cases worse than the policy. My complaint is that he is good at campaigning, but no good at governing. Governing means bringing in people who have a lot of knowledge and listening to them. On that measure Bush has been just awful.”

Fukuyama seemed animated by this change of topic. At this stage on the tape his voice projects clearly through the surrounding clatter of cutlery. So did Bush’s alleged incompetence mark him out as an aberration, I asked?

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” he said. “I don’t think Bush’s level of competence or intelligence is any worse than the average senator.” I countered with the names of a couple of very impressive senators. “I said `average senator’,” Fukuyama shot back.

Having abandoned our coffees, we sauntered outside. Perhaps it was this last focus on Bush. But Fukuyama’s departing grip was far stronger than the one with which he had greeted me.[emphasis added]

Of course, Bush has needed to listen to more knowledgeable voices from the outside for years now, as it is manifestly clear that advice he's often gotten from Cheney and Rumsfeld has been just god-awful. There has been of late, it appears, some reaching out to the Fred Kagans, Eliot Cohens and other whip-smart critics of assorted whopping Rumsfeldian blunders. But it appears to be of the too little, too late, variety. Regardless, and for the sin of daring to point this out, people like Fukuyama have been excommunicated from the cathedrals of the true-believers, who amazingly are recommending such imbecilic policy prescriptions as whipping up a civil war in Iran, as if one in Iraq isn't enough. Schumpterian creative destruction, after all, is an economic theory--not a persuasive approach to statecraft. Quick, someone clue in the gang in DC still manning the transformationist Krauthammerian ramparts. The gig is up kiddies, and there's a damn big mess to clean up. Let's not make it bigger, OK?