Newsweek Swallows a Bitter Pill

What Bush Got Right
Writing this week in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria is forced to concede that:

The other noted political scientist who has been vindicated in recent weeks is George W. Bush. Across New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—and probably Europe and Asia as well—people are nervously asking themselves a question: "Could he possibly have been right?" The short answer is yes. Whether or not Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things.

But before you begin to celebrate Newsweek's epiphany, there is also this:

But Bush's capacity to imagine a different Middle East may actually be related to his relative ignorance of the region. Had he traveled to the Middle East and seen its many dysfunctions, he might have been disheartened. Freed from looking at the day-to-day realities, Bush maintained a vision of what the region could look like.

That's right. Bush was right because he's stupid. Zakaria just couldn't resist a grauitous insult. With this preposterous statement Zakaria brands himself a political hack, typical of Newsweek writers.

Newsweek seems to feel an obligation to pander to its liberal reader base by making any praise for President Bush not only grudging, but mean-spirited.