The experts we trust to provide guidance to our elected officials have
\t\t failed us, seduced by the lure of cable television fame and popular book sales,
\t\t argue Halper and Clarke (coauthors of America Alone:
\t\t The Neoconservatives and the Global Order). Abandoning scholarship,
\t\t too many have instead set off in search of the next Big Idea in foreign policy
\t\t that purports to explain the world in five words or less. This phenomenon is
\t\t not new—the authors identify Big Ideas from manifest destiny through the
\t\t domino theory to the clash of civilizations—but the tendency to simplify a
\t\t complex reality has become especially pernicious in the Iraq war debate.
\t\t Finding targets on the right and left, the authors excoriate the Heritage
\t\t Foundation as much as Noam Chomsky for lowering the level of public discourse.
\t\t Though sometimes overblown (e.g., calling a public intellectual's decision to
\t\t pen a regular op-ed column for a major daily newspaper a "Faustian arrangement
\t\t with the media"), they paint a picture familiar to anyone who follows politics.
\t\t Ironically, for a work that praises dispassionate, in-depth investigation, this
\t\t book would have been better as a short essay. (Feb.)
