Link Banana

After having fallen asleep while watching the last two, I can’t really disagree with Mr. Keating (who wrote this before Wednesday’s debate. Yes, I’m behind.):

The “media elites,” as Sarah Palin would say, are hungry for the candidates to make news at the debates and seem perpetually disappointed when they just hear the same talking points they’ve been reporting for months.

As I wrote near the end of the Democratic primary, the candidate’s positions on nearly every conceivable issue are so well-refined and publicized at this point, that the only way to generate news at a debate is to go the George Stephanapolous route of asking pop quiz questions and emphasizing personal scandal. There’s really no way for Schieffer to win. If he asks good substantive questions, the candidates will recite their talking points and the debate will be boring. If he presses them on “character” issues and personal attacks, he’ll (rightly) be accused of descending into tabloidism.

So why have debates at all? What would we lose without them?

There’s also a follow-up.

You probably missed it — I nearly did — but Joshua Keating points out that three important things happened yesterday:

Israel and Syria, technically at war since 1967, are holding historic peace talks in Turkey that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described as a “national obligation.” The Lebanese government negotiated a compromise with Hezbollah, ending 18 months of violence and political deadlock. And Pakistan’s government defied the U.S. by agreeing to withdraw from Taliban-controlled territory in exchange for security guarantees.

They also make the point that this is clear sign of the current irrelevance of the United States to world politics.

Joshua Keating makes an interesting point about Francis Fukuyama’s “the end of history” and a few other clichés:

Why does it seem as thought every big-think piece on the last two decades of foreign policy must include at least one instance where the author trots out Fukuyama just to kick him in the teeth? Is there really no other way to describe early-90s, capitalist triumphalism than using this one phrase?

But “The End of History” is hardly alone. There are a number of convenient phrases and quotes that seem to pop up again and again as convenient shorthand for writers discussing big, complex foreign policy ideas. It’s for this very reason that FP has a blanket ban on article submissions begining “Since the end of the cold war…” or “In the wake of Sept. 11…”