"Best and the Brightest"

Rick Perlstein's picture

Some idiot Obama adviser just told George Stephanopoulos that Obama's advisors should not merely be like Lincoln's "team of rivals," but akin to "The Best and the Brightest, the David Halberstam book about the incoming Kennedy administration."

Um, Mr. Idiot Obama Advisor? Not very bright. The Best and the Brightest is the classic account of how the Kennedy foreign policy team's hubris and overly high regard for their own brilliance helped give us the Vietnam War.

Free advice: hubris is a dangerous thing. Guard against it. Especially if you're staking your foreign policy on a military escalation meant to tamp down a low-level insurgency in a quagmire-friendly Asian country.





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