Rich: I think you make a very good point re Brooks and my endorsement of his column. I think you partially changed my mind.

But lest folks think I’m just sucking up to the boss, let me say that I think I disagree with your take on Condoleezza Rice’s famous statement in your column today. You write:

In Cairo in 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously said that we had “pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.” Her statement is now hailed as prescient, but it was wrong by any reasonable standard.

I think you’re reading her too narrowly. First, she says we pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, and I think that’s true. We did emphasize stability over democracy. As to whether we achieved neither, I think you’re right that we had something like stability in/with Egypt since 1981. But what kind of stability? Surely this wasn’t the sort of stability enjoyed between, say, France and Germany since 1945. Rather, it was more analogous to the stability one gets when you lock down a lid on a boiling pot. When the lid blows off, it doesn’t make much sense to be shocked that the era of stability came to an end.

I do not think that a blind pursuit of democracy at the expense of other priorities and interests makes much sense. But surely a nearly blind pursuit of stability at the expense of democracy is foolish as well. Pinochet and Franco were dictators, but they left their countries ready to embrace democracy. Mubarak has done no such prep work, even though he was largely dependent on U.S. support. That we didn’t push him harder to prepare for a post-Mubarak Egypt was a blunder caused by our pursuit of stability-on-the-cheap that many may have to pay dearly for now, starting with the Egyptian people.