US FOREIGN POLICY: LESS RAMBO, MORE KISSINGER

From the Boston Globe.   The column challenges both candidates to act less like Rambo and more like Kissinger.  It is interesting that the columnist would want to go back to Kissinger who was not well-liked by many Democrats, particularly for his Vietnam policy (I assume the columnist is a Harvard liberal since the overwhelming number of university professors are liberals).  But time and history add perspective.

He is right to recognize the realistic and nuanced conduct of policy under Nixon and Kissinger.  The column also caught my eye because I talked to a person who worked in the State Department in more recent years and felt it was a mess.  He actually mentioned that probably the best years of US foreign policy were in the Nixon-Kissinger years because Kissinger managed to head-off many of the disastrous decisions of the State Department bureaucrats.  Except maybe for Reagan, presidents after Nixon (whether Democrat or Republican) have had a hard time countermanding the ineptness of the State Department bureaucracy.