I’ve been arguing for some time that the hubris that took George Bush to war in Iraq is similar to the hubris by which the left thinks it can come up with a nationalized health care plan that will work. In both cases, the proponents are without a clear plan for what to do once the conquest is complete. They just tell us that surely there has got to be some way to do it.
The people I’ve mentioned this to act like they don’t know what I’m talking about. But Joel Klein gets it. He understands the similarities. He thinks his version is better than the Bush version, but he gets it:
I didn’t question the patriotism of conservatives: I simply argued that it is more patriotic to be optimistic about the chance that our collective will–that is, the best work of government–will succeed, rather than that it will fail or impinge on freedom.