Foreign Affairs has an ongoing series this month featuring essays from each of the major candidates for the presidency. LAst time around we got Obama and Romney, and this time up its Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards. In a previous post I detailed just how incoherent Romney's essay was. I honestly expected things couldn't get much worse. Boy was I wrong.
Giuliani's essay is so bad, so horrifically bad, that I've actually been putting off writing about it. What does one do with an attempt, for example, to rename the War on Terror "The Terrorists' War on Us"?
But then I read this from Slate's Fred Kaplan, and suddenly it was clear:
Rudy Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I've ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible).
What would I write if a student in one of my classes submitted this as their term paper?
It would go something like this:
Rudy,Where to begin?
I understand that the requirements of this assignment were complex, but there is no excuse for the work that lays before me. What precisely is your thesis? And where is the specific evidence to support it? Assertions cannot pass for evidence, and statements of opinions cannot be passed off as fact. Had this been a short op-ed for the Daily Free Press your approach might have worked, but surely you know that this assignment called for a much, much more rigorous approach.
Take, for example, the following sentence:
Idealism should define our ultimate goals; realism must help us recognize the road we must travel to achieve themIdealism and realism are antonyms. What precisely would it mean to pursue idealistic goals in a realistic manner? If such an approach were successful, would that not by definition mean that the goals themselves had from the start been realistic? If not, why not? Rather than explain your approach, you instead follow with a series of empty assertions - "The world is a dangerous place. We cannot afford to indulge any illusions about the enemies we face," for example - that do nothing to resolve the contradictions that you yourself have set out.
The assignment called for you to lay out your vision of a foreign policy for the next four years. Instead you have presented me with a paper filled with slogans and empty rhetoric. I'm willing to give you the opportunity to rewrite this, but please, before you do, come see me during office hours!
Grade: D
And for the record, yes, I do actually write comments like this on my students papers, particularly when I feel that they have not taken the assignment seriously. Most of my students like me, or so I am told. But at the same time, I've also been told that those who do poorly in my classes really, really don't like me. I suppose feedback like this might be the reason why. But the way I see it, these kids will be out in the "real world" soon enough, and in the "real world" people aren't always nice to you. Turn in something like this in school and you get a nasty note; turn in something like this to your boss and you may get yourself fired. Which is worse?
UPDATE: Great summary, analysis, and summary of the analysis of others from Hilzoy.
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