Max Boot is an awfully smart guy. But isn’t it a little odd that he defines

“neoconservatism” in a way that excludes from the category both Irving Kristol

(who does not believe that Third World countries can afford to be democracies)

and, arguably, Charles Krauthammer (who opposed the Kosovo intervention)? And

that includes the editors of the New Republic? And that he apparently believes

that “laissez faire” economics is compatible with today’s welfare state?

Some people with foreign-policy views similar to those of Boot attempt to

claim Ronald Reagan for their school. Boot, at least, comes clean about the

fact that his views are more Wilsonian than Reaganite. I suspect he will find

in time that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary Rumsfeld are

no more Wilsonian than Reagan was.