A New Beginning?

Are old animosities between the realists (or, better put, appeasers) at State and the Neocon/idealists at the White House really disappearing? Will State and the Pentagon actually begin working in concert to advance the President's policies?

David Brooks thinks he sees signs of a rapprochement among these warring factions, and I certainly hope he's correct -- if that means a vanquishing of the leaky liberals at State and the Pentagon, who worked overtime during the campaign to undermine the administration's policies.

Brooks says that the battle of ideas is getting more attention so that liberty can be spread by means other than arms. I hope he's correct there, too, since a glaring weakness in the President's plans thus far has been their lack of appreciation for the role that education should play in making possible the establishment and growth of civil society. Voting, key though it is, isn't an end in itself, and absent a vigorous campaign to teach leaders about the rule of law, a free press, and freedom of speech, the victory symbolized by elections could be ephemeral.

Part of the new atmosphere Brooks detects is of course a consequence of the ending of the campaign season. Unlike the Clinton administration, which created the "permanent campaign," the Bush White House seems determined to actually get things done. The strategy for accomplishing that is still in the making, and Brooks's reading of current trends could be encouraging, but only if the ends -- an ending of tyranny -- aren't lost in the process.