http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/19/the-foreign-policy-advantages-of-obama-as-bush-iii.html

The Foreign-Policy Advantages of Obama as Bush III

by Dan tdaxp ~ June 19th, 2008

Coming Anarchy, Phatic Communion, Soob, Tom Barnett, Weekly Standard, and zenpundit have thematically similar posts that boil down to a a discussion of America’s relatively talentless political class.
This is a good thing.
The most ambitious should be in the business of creating wealth, not redistributing it. I trust the emergent qualities of a free market a lot more than I trust the best plans in the world as far as it comes to global growth and global betterment. On a large scale, the role of government is exception handling, and I want those exceptions handled as smoothly (which means with as little divergence from the global system) as possible.
We’ve had about nine years of this style of leadership now (from the Seattle Riots to the Bush Administration). An Obama administration promises to continue this. Obam as Bush III is my kind of Obama: a long way down from the politician I once thought he was, but much better than I think many critics give him credit for.
An Obama Presidency offers a reasonable hope in the Establishment: a vote for Obama is a vote for the status-quo. As the status-quo is one of the best in world history, that’s a solid argument.
As it relates to Obama, many commentators are now raising the hope that Obama will be bureaucratically captured in the same way that Petreaues and Gates were. Even better for us, Obama will have little operational control over what actually happens.
John McCain, on the other hand, pushes well thought out ideas, eve if they are politically unpopular. This is dangerous. We had a good original thinker with Bill Clinton. But before Clinton, the last major American figures who were smart and energetic when it comes to economics were also disasterous and downright anti-Constitutional.
Great men make great mistakes. Weak men go with the flow. Sometimes it’s better to go with the flow.