Powell and Rice, appointed by Bush, are the kind of post-racial figures the US, deep down, longs for. ~Geoff Elliott

The failed and incompetent kind?  Yes, I know what Elliott is saying, but wouldn’t it be better if our so-called “post-racial figures” were, well, not complicit in waging an unjust war and generally making a hash of U.S. foreign policy? 

Are we also supposed to believe that Secretary Rice’s background never comes up?  She brings it up all the time in the context of making strained analogies with her current foreign policy assignment.  Say what you will about that, but the idea that her background is somehow incidental and unnoticed is a bit hard to take.

Forget about the gift to Obama–Elliot’s column is a gift to bloggers.  Consider these lines:

Indeed, Obama embodies the American dream, and at their core most Americans remain idealistic about what is possible as individuals and as a society. Its expression is found across a diverse political spectrum: from the neo-cons’ grand, if likely flawed [bold mine-DL], vision of a militant promotion of democracy, to lofty liberal ideas finding new form in the US in ventures such as Ashoka, a group that is helping fund “social entrepreneurs” to make changes in the environment, human rights and health, where government bureaucracies have failed.

Their “likely flawed” vision?  Is there still any notion that a “militant promotion of democracy” is anything other than inherently wrong and incredibly dangerous?  Are we seriously supposed to include democratist warmongering and fundraising for social work in the same category, as just two kinds of American idealism?  Isn’t the pairing of armed fanatical utopianism with much more modest social activist work the best way to discredit all kinds of idealism?