Some of my readers are writing and saying, “Hey Steve, where are you?? Senator Hagel spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations and called this administration one of the most incompetent in American history! This is your stuff!” They have written, “Hagel had dinner again with Bloomberg! Is he gonna run?”
As regular readers of this blog know, I am a great fan of Senator Hagel’s. The Chairman of my Director’s Council at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program, Rita Hauser, participated in the meeting and posed the first question to the Senator, etc. — so I’ve been kept up to date.
But the real reason I haven’t written more is that the Senator’s comments are largely in line with what he has been saying already — and his talk in New York actually began with his letter to President Bush which The Washington Note first got into the public domain.
But I am enthused by his comments, and I want him to remain engaged not just in public commentary about the administration but in serious efforts to undo the harm that has been done. That takes more than rhetoric. We need a bigger team of people pulling on legislative options to counter the mess in our foreign policy portfolio.
If you scroll down below, I moderated a very successful economic policy forum this morning — which ran about three and a half hours. The meeting will air on C-Span today and throughout the next week I’m told. I’m in recovery mode now from the exciting but exhausting demands of this meeting.
And quite embarrassingly, while in the men’s restroom at the Cosmos Club, I saw a bottle of colored liquid next to some small cups. The cups were clearly meant for mouthwash. The bottle, however, was full of toxic tasting aftershave which I thoroughly gargled with.
Don’t try that at home — I still feel sick from it.
More later.
— Steve Clemons
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