Matt Yglesias

Norquist: No Mayor of Baghdad

I was disappointed by a dull talk from Grover Norquist yesterday, but I just unexpectedly saw him again at a New America Foundation event on foreign policy. I’d forgotten how purely cynical he is about these issues. Per Norquist, the big problem with Bush’s foreign policy has been that he often “talks like he wants to be mayor of Baghdad” and thus what John McCain needs to do is basically all the same stuff, but talk about America more. As he sees it, Americans don’t care at all about foreign policy because our country is very big and you can drive hundreds of miles without crossing a border.