Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Feet of Clay Dept.:

I now read the blog of Harvard-perched Dani Rodrik quite regularly. He's very clever, but this post got my teeth gnashing:

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/let_political_s.html

Dani's lead: "This is the best thing I have read from a political scientist in a while...." Not saying a lot, admittedly – but even so, it's spectacularly bad: brass-trumpeting, coneheaded, Merlin-of-empire clarionizing by a Princeton poli-wog:

The grand strategy America needs to pursue in the years ahead is not one aimed at a particular threat but rather at restoring its role as the recognized and legitimate leader of the system and rebuilding the institutions and partnerships upon which this leadership position is based....

The grand strategy I am proposing can be called liberal order building. It is essentially a 21st century version of the strategy that the United States pursued after World War II in the shadow of the Cold War -- a strategy which produced the liberal hegemonic order that has provided the framework for the Western and global system ever since....

American power is put in the service of an agreed upon system of Western-oriented global governance. American power is made acceptable to the world because it is embedded in these agreed upon rules and institutions.... The system itself leverages resources and fosters cooperation that makes the actual functioning of the order one that solves problems, creates stability, and allows democracy and capitalism to flourish. Liberal order building is America's distinctive contribution to world politics.

My lord, and I thought Dani was a real emerging-worldview prog? Maybe he sees this as a near perfect synthesis of the liberal pandemonium's conventional wisdom -- but if so, say so, for God's sake. Really now -- a new protocol of empire "the best thing I've read in eons?" Poor Dani may be just an Ivy League merit noodle after all, if the likes of this "we earthlings need a return to adult management" crap gets him scratching his wonderdome in admiration.