To not give the answer away too easily, I changed one word in the quote below, and masked a proper name. With those caveats in mind, who said most of the following...
The president seems to have taken, at least until recently, the most anachronistic aspects of that policy -- an excessive reliance on arms, an obsessive antiterrorism and an imperial, unilateral behavior at odds with our constitutional democracy -- and carried them to the breaking point. However inadvertently, the administration has dramatized the inadequacy of policies no longer relevant to the real world.Answer (and the point of this exercise) a little later in the day...
UPDATE:
Reader GWB nails it on the first try. The quote is from the father of modern Democratic foreign policy, George McGovern. McGovern wrote the above passage about Ronald Reagan in 1987 (As GWB also points out, GM talked about anticommunism, not antiterrorism). That’s right, just about a year before the collapse of the Soviet Empire, McGovern wanted to withdraw the pressures about to cause that collapse.
The core beliefs of Democratic foreign policy haven't changed. Liberals continue to see every use of American power as obsessive, imperial and unilateral, and continue to respond to every challenge by urging America to walk away. That policy makes as much sense today as it did in ’87.
Here’s the whole passage, unabridged…
Ronald Reagan may represent the end of the line for the bipartisan cold war policy. The president seems to have taken, at least until recently, the most anachronistic aspects of that policy -- an excessive reliance on arms, an obsessive anticommunism and an imperial, unilateral behavior at odds with our constitutional democracy -- and carried them to the breaking point. However inadvertently, the Reagan Administration has dramatized the inadequacy of policies no longer relevant to the real world. Mr. Reagan has believed he was presiding over "morning in America"; we are about to experience the "morning after."
The answer is former US Senator George McGovern, who was the democratic presidential candidate in 1972.
Posted by: GWB at November 17, 2005 3:33 PMI believe the quote included the word, "anticommunism" and not "antiterrorism."
Bearing that in mind, I still think we all get your point.
Posted by: GWB at November 17, 2005 3:37 PMWinner!!! Do I get a prize?
Great post/point.
I hope you won't think I'm getting too personal if I ask if there's a story behind your familiarity with McGovernite proclamations?
(Call me naive, but I'm assuming you got the answer without any technical assistance)
Posted by: Andrew at November 18, 2005 12:21 PM