Thursday, June 28, 2007

Compare and Contrast

I recently had a chance to spend some time watching Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani answer tough questions on foreign policy. I will blog more on this later and with more specifics, but here's my takeaway impression:

Mitt Romney has an amazingly orderly mind and an impressive grasp of detail. He also has a serious Garbage In/Garbage Out problem - that is, while his mind processes information in a lucid and logical way, his intake valves lack filters for screening out nonsense. The overwhelming impression that I took away from his presentation was that it was ... silly.

Rudy Giuliani skips lightly over crucial details. His plans are much less worked through than Romney's. But the spirit behind them is exactly right. People say he has no background in foreign policy. I was left wondering whether a lifetime of fighting the Mafia is not exactly the right background for dealing with Islamic terrorism. As he said: the mullahs released the hostages in 1981 because they looked into Ronald Reagan's eyes and saw something they did not see in Jimmy Carter's. I saw that same something in Guiliani's. Whatever his other faults, he is never silly.

A reader adds:

As for the mob and terrorists: they are actually, in temperament, consanguine. The difference between the First World and the Third World is that the men running the Third World would be in the First World’s prisons. 

06/28 11:04 AM