Jonathan Chait has written a smart post defending Andrew against the charge of anti-Semitism that is worth a look. But I’d like to draw attention to a brief aside in the concluding paragraph.

Indeed, on the Middle East, Andrew falls prey to a habitual tendency to see the world divided between children of darkness and children of light. This is not a problem for a writer who is describing conflicts between Democrats and Republicans. When the parties involve happen to correspond with ethnic groups, then it’s going to be impossible to avoid language that appears racialistic. I don’t think that Andrew’s transformation from overwrought hawk to overwrought dove is driven by, or has brought about, a different view of Jews. It seems instead to be the shattering of a brittle worldview and its replacement by a new worldview, equally brittle. [Emphasis added.]

I’d submit that dividing the world between children of darkness and children of light is always a problem, even when one applies this logic to ideological or partisan categories rather than ethnic groups. It is a problem because it leads to team-oriented thinking that is the enemy of good judgment.

For Chait, criticisms of the Obama administration seem to equal defenses of the Bush administration. I tend to think that one can criticize both administrations on very similar grounds. That doesn’t mean that there are no meaningful distinctions between them. Indeed, Chait has offered a number of examples of ways in which the Obama administration has done a better job than the previous administration. Perhaps the best example, which John B. Judis discussed at length, is that President Obama has committed resources to strengthening federal regulatory agencies. While I disagree with the president in some respects regarding what should and what should not be regulated, I certainly believe that regulators should have the tools they need to do their jobs well. And if doing their jobs well proves too costly or inconvenient for firms and individuals, as it very well might, we should pare back their jobs in an above-board, honest way.

There are, however, other ways in which the Bush administration did a better job that is commonly acknowledged. The unheralded successes of Medicare Advantage are a good example, a subject I’ll address in a future post. (Walton Francis’s Putting Medicare Consumers in Charge is an invaluable guide.)

Again, not children of light, not children of darkness: just flawed, limited, team-oriented, often smart, occasionally stupid people who are subject to all kinds of cross-pressures and biases.