This is interesting but very unfair to Samantha Power and Tony Lake. It's also a wierd argument; it's clear that institutions have to change as Dan himself notes in his new FA essay. Why? Well, 9/11 for one. Rwanda and Kosovo for another (the 1999 war only looks good by comparison with Iraq). The demise of the international financial institutions is a third reason. The reality that the novelty of a new and brilliant president will wear thin after a few years and the world will look for more substance is a fourth. Kagan wasn't all wrong; some of these problems we now have predate Bush. Anyway I think Hirsh does team Obama a favor. Change versus more of the same, reform versus inertia. This is an argument it will have and it is an argument it will win, hands down.

Dan, it is amazing for someone who holds Republicans to such a tough standard, how easy you are on Senator Obama. Senator Obama has no views on foreign policy that are not already part of liberal orthodoxy. As someone who follows politics, you should or already know this.

He supported intervening in the Sudan (a position which he no longer holds) but paradoxically thought intervening in Iraq was a bad idea. He has never voted for a trade agreement. He believes "talking" with our enemies solves all, without elaborating. He tries and so far is succeeding in being all things to all people. In Iowa, he is stressing the need to recognize the plight of Palestinians while at AIPAC he is talking about his committment to Israel's security.

Dan, you may want to take down your self-characterization on this website as a libertarian Republican. You are not a Republican and haven't been since at least 2004. Which, coincidentally coincided when you were up for tenure.

Dan, it is amazing for someone who holds Republicans to such a tough standard, how easy you are on Senator Obama. Senator Obama has no views on foreign policy that are not already part of liberal orthodoxy. As someone who follows politics, you should or already know this.

He supported intervening in the Sudan (a position which he no longer holds) but paradoxically thought intervening in Iraq was a bad idea. He has never voted for a trade agreement. He believes "talking" with our enemies solves all, without elaborating. He tries and so far is succeeding in being all things to all people. In Iowa, he is stressing the need to recognize the plight of Palestinians while at AIPAC he is talking about his committment to Israel's security.

Dan, you may want to take down your self-characterization on this website as a libertarian Republican. You are not a Republican and haven't been since at least 2004. Which, coincidentally coincided when you were up for tenure.

Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barron in prep school, has hired Samantha -look-how-I-hit-all-the-left-liberal-buzz-points Power and Dan is all excited and thinks he has spotted a winner.

Come again??

Please, Dan. Anthony Lake?? Why not roll out Sandy Berger as the new standard of competence?

The hard truth is that at this historical moment, American foreign policy has to be more bellicose and threatening than the comfort level of most of our academic elite. We are in a "cold war" with people who are ready to, and do, "go hot" on a moment's notice. The only Democratic foreign policy bigwig who's worth a damn in this situation is Richard Holbrooke.

Am I the only one who was struck by the following passage of Hirsch's article where he relates Samantha Power's own recollection of her first meeting with Senator Obama??

Their [Obama and Power's] first meeting, several months later at a D.C. steakhouse, did not begin auspiciously. “His body language was not good,” says Power. “He had no desire to be there at all. It was, ‘Who the fuck is this person, this lily-livered Harvard softy, and tell me why I am meeting with her again?’” Still, Obama warmed up—it was supposed to be a forty-five-minute chat, but they ended up talking for three hours. “We sat down, and we started dinner. I was on my best behavior: I didn’t, like, order my trademark Jack Daniels. And then we just started talking. It was vintage Obama: question after question after question, starting with, ‘Who are you? I don’t get it. Bosnia? Whaaa? That’s weird.’ It ended up being a very personal discussion, oddly enough, but everything led to policy. That’s the way he comes to policy: What’s your story, and why do you tick the way you do? ... He’s what everybody says he is.” Before long, Power says, she had “drunk the Kool-Aid” on Obama. “At the end of the dinner, we’re walking out, and I said, ‘I’d love to help you in any way I can.’ He said, ‘That’d be great, maybe we could do some big think on a smart, tough, and humane foreign policy.’ I heard myself saying, ‘Why don’t I take a year off?’”

Two things strike me:

1) Samantha Power probably needs to be more reticient when talking to reporters. Assuming Hirsch didn't misquote her, I think she does Obama no favors by sharing that Obama, sitting down for a 1-on-1 dinner with her, initially and quite visibly seemed neither to know nor care who she was. (Also, she probably shouldn't appear in print using "F#@k" too many more times.)

2) Gosh! Despite the opening line of Dan's long excerpt of Hirsch's article:

There’s no doubt that Obama has the intellectual curiosity [ emphasis mine ]...to fundamentally reconsider American foreign policy.

it really seems to me that there should be doubt. From Power's recollections it would seem that, at least around late 2005, Obama had no particular intrinsic curiosity for foreign affairs. I mean, if Obama were personally curious on foreign affairs, then why on Earth would he have ever said "Who are you? I don't get it. Bosnia, whaaa? That's weird" to Samantha Power as she recounts how she spent the last decade of her life?! And on that note, while I have a tremendous amount of respect for people with spectacular 1-on-1 skills of persuasion (and he must be stunning if Power's so smitten with him despite the first impression "Bosnia, whaaa? That's weird"), I'm not enthused that Power's description of "vintage Obama" questioning centers on him eliciting a person's life story and why they care about an issue rather than factual and conceptual questions about said issue.

I mean, I have no doubt Senator Obama is a much, much more intellectually curious and quick-to-learn than the current occupant of the White House. And I realize that Senators/Presidents/etc. are very, very busy and can't know everything and, as such, should be judged in many ways on what staff they keep around them rather than what they know personally, but again: I was not enthused by Power's recollection of her first meeting with Obama.

If someone put a gun to your head, would you stop making predictions for a while?

If it were 2012 I'd agree with you, but it's not, and most Americans want their President—no matter how attractive a candidate he is— to have some experience running something, even if it's only a few crappy companies, a crappy baseball team, and the state of Texas.

So really the only question is whether or not Hillary is going to pummel him over his lack of experience during the primaries to the point that she can't turn around and put him on the ticket.

I'm thinking that having run "a few crappy companies, a crappy baseball team, and the state of Texas" won't be enough in 2008. Sometimes these things go in cycles, and someone with some imagination, charisma, and curiousity might be able to beat someone whose c.v. is boardroom-certified.

Why has conventional wisdom seemed to have settled on the idea that being president is akin to being a CEO? I'm not aware of any evidence that suggests voters think that. Hillary Clinton is scared for a reason: we may be at a moment that charismatic smarts trump calculating smarts. And the candidates who've "run something" may lose out to the candidates with that je ne sais quois that suggests hope for some intellectually coherent policy.

In other words, it may be that what is most broken today is not the international system, but American stewardship of it.

Or that what is most broken is the American system.

That is, I am much more interested in whether Obama (or anyone else) has anything new to say about democratic political reform at home.

I am not, of course, holding my breath.

I am tending to agree with your "if I had to say now" prediction.