As was pointed out in the comments on Ygelsias' blog, this stance holds for the neoconservative position on just about anything. Do not need to know anything about climate science to address science policy decisions. Do not need to know anything about science to address science education. The list goes on.

and look just where these past seven years of gleeful ignorance has taken us...

booyah, motherfuckers, for the red white and blue.

"I don't take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world," he said. "I'm not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin's experience."

Uh-huh. This would be the same Bob Kagan who went to Yale, then got a master's from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a PhD from American University?

Wasn't that kind of, well, stupid of him to have spent so much time, money and energy acquiring all those fancy degrees in his area of expertise when he could just have moved to Alaska and absorbed it all by osmosis?

Sadly,

One might say the same thing about Yglesias--lack of knowledge, preparation, experience or study of foreign affairs hasn't stopped him!

Extremism in the defense of nonsense is no vice.

Kagan is like Pollack and O'Hanlan: I have no idea why anyone takes seriously anything written by any of them as I think, combined, they are batting below the Mendoza Line on policy prescriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendoza_line

I think their view is that someone who hasn't digested years of foreign policy study has an "America first" gut instinct, where they fear someone who does have such study is more of an "appeaser".

It seems a bit shortsighted, but understandable. I simply disagree with them.

Kagen and crew are still trying to figure out those Holiday Inn Express commercials. They just don't get the joke.

My only wish is that when the day comes that Kagen needs surgery, we can bring in someone without any higher education who happens to live near a hospital and has opinions on health care costs. Hey, Bob, requiring actual education and credentials are for the effete elitists, right? now this won't hurt one bit. . .

Don't worry. She'll learn foreign policy from 'the master.' (Which has creepy biblical overtones, doesn't it?)

I can't wait until she gets to his lessons on Shia and Sunni and the President of Germany!

Pop quiz, Sarah. Pop quiz, indeed.

Wasn't that kind of, well, stupid of him to have spent so much time, money and energy acquiring all those fancy degrees in his area of expertise when he could just have moved to Alaska and absorbed it all by osmosis? Posted by: Stefan

Hardly, you jealous Ft. Lee poseur! Then he gets to hang out with Bill Kristol and has Cheney and Rumsfeld on speed dial.

Someone be sure to remind the Senator to coach her about Czechoslovakia.

Kagan is as elitist as they come. More evidence of the Republican apathy to hypocrisy.

Conservatives are helped by the most fundamental misperception in our foreign policy: that people of other cultures actually want to be like us. They don't. They want to be like themselves, only better. But if we were to take into account the desires of other cultures, we wouldn't reach the conclusions that conservatives reach. Fortunately for conservatives, American people don't even have a clue what other cultures think. So thinking they want to be like Americans is a great placeholder. The problem, of course, is that our foreign policy is based on an illusion. Until that changes, we will make bad decisions. And it won't change until we stop listening to people like Kagan.

"I don't take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world," he said. "I'm not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin's experience."

And this experience would consist of....what, exactly?

Kagan is being disingenuous. The real reason he favors politicians who are completely ignorant, but ideologically allied to him, is that then he and his fellow think-tank neocons get to tell them what to do, and they follow, because they don't know any better. Someone who actually knows something about the world might not be as malleable.

So Obama's "lack of experience" is crippling, but noting the fact that Palin has much less experience is "elitist"? Mmmm-kay.

Have rubes elected to positions of power just means job security for old hands like Kagan.

Few of Bush's appointments to office know anything about the cabinets they oversee. We've seen the horrible results this philosophy amounts to in Katrina and the deaths of our pets or emission control standards. How desperate to say she lived next to Russian border or lived in an oil producing state to suffice for FP exp or NS esp. She was picked because she wears lipstick...period...and now you try to justify it by any means that is plausible...and Kagan isn't even that.

Of course they prefer you have no opinion or experience on foreign policy because then you might be qualified to challenge their neocon policies. The more knowledgeable you are on foreign policy the harder it is to convince you to do their bidding.

If McCain had picked the opposite kind of running mate…one knowledgeable and experienced on foreign policy then Kagan would be heralding that person as the necessary pick for having such traits. Kagan is a phony who says whatever he thinks will keep him in power and well paid by his republican “think tank�. He’s a fat sweaty chicken hawk who wouldn’t last a day doing what he asks others to do. Stuffing his face while others are stuffing bandages in their wounds which he sent to die for his beliefs. A truly dis-likable human being whose hypocrisy places self interest above the good of the nation. He knows damn good and well Palin is a disastrous pick for VP because she is totally unqualified to cope with foreign policy (“Someone tell me just what it is a prime minister or a dictator does all day long…er…I mean a vice president does all day long. Yup, yup yup“). Just pathetic Kagan. You should be embarrassed.

Of course they prefer you have no opinion or experience on foreign policy because then you might be qualified to challenge their neocon policies. The more knowledgeable you are on foreign policy the harder it is to convince you to do their bidding.

If McCain had picked the opposite kind of running mate…one knowledgeable and experienced on foreign policy then Kagan would be heralding that person as the necessary pick for having such traits. Kagan is a phony who says whatever he thinks will keep him in power and well paid by his republican “think tank�. He’s a fat sweaty chicken hawk who wouldn’t last a day doing what he asks others to do. Stuffing his face while others are stuffing bandages in their wounds which he sent to die for his beliefs. A truly dislikable human being whose hypocrisy places self interest above the good of the nation. He knows damn good and well Palin is a disastrous pick for VP because she is totally unqualified to cope with foreign policy (“Someone tell me just what it is a prime minister or a dictator does all day long…er…I mean a vice president does all day long.“). Just pathetic Kagan.

Bush used unqualified people to handle cabinet positions and we all see how well that worked out.

Kagan wants another Alberto Gonzales type who only does what the party tells them to do without memory or question. It's more of the attempt to sale us a sow's ear dressed up like a purse. Kagan should be embarrassed by his remarks.

Palin was picked because she wears lipstick...period

Kagan is axiomatic of the same crowd who worship at the feet of the idiot who does all his foreign-policy thinking with "his gut". I guess when you have a gut, a brain is overkill. It tells you all you need to know about this group's plans for a McCain/Palin presidency; just get 'em elected - we'll do the thinking.

this does raise the question, however, of how and why the Chuck Hagels and Colin Powells of the world can continue to look at themselves in the mirror when they have not come out for Obama. I'll give Lugar and sitting office holders not retiring a pass - no one wants to be a Lieberman - but these folks with nothing to lose and everything to gain in honor and stature who know foreign policy and know Palin is wholly unqualified have a moral and patriotic obligation to get off the fence. Now would be a fine time, fellas.

It is simple. To a NEOCON, the point is to push other countries around (to being like us).

Knowing about other countries gives realists this foolish belief that other countries might actually deserve to NOT be like us, and therefore is an impediment to converting the whole world into the Chicago School of Economics hyper-capitalist utopia.

Palin is an ignorant, hypocritical slut with an Alaskan hillbilly family of drug-addled losers and teen whores' and she knows about as much about foreign policy as Pee Wee Herman - so what would an erudite gentleman like Lugar have to say about this trailer trash bimbo??

Look, this was Obama's argument. Who had more experience than Cheney and Rumsfeld? Look where that got us.

Kagan is just taking care of business. An ignorant but hawkish US president will naturally pay good money to a bevy of neocon advisors (some of whom have been paid lobbyists, lawyers, or agents for the Likud Party) to develop her strategies and guide key decisions on which countries to attack and when.

Ideally, "Pudge" Kagan would like a president and vice president to be malleable in terms of converting them to his endless war program. With Palin, he is halfway there.

If ignorance is going to have a champion, by god, it has a doozy in Kagan.

I think Matt is looking at this the wrong way, and Kevin is much closer to the answer. Neoconservative thinkers like Kagan don't care for people with fairly deep understanding of foreign policy and international relations because, well because people with a relatively deep understanding of international relations will tend to reject neoconservatism. That's why they didn't like 41, because he relegated the neocon wing to the JV squad and promoted realists like Baker and Scowcroft. They didn't like Nixon because Kissinger ran the show and, for all his flaws, Kissinger is certainly not particularly sympathetic to neocons. Gut level types like Reagan and Dubs, are ore sympathetic to the ideas neocons promote. When you add in Dubya's well documented inferioirty complex, the idea of American greatness and perpetual transcendental conflicts to lead neoconservatism offers start to look pretty damn good too.

Is anybody really surprised about this?

I mean, let's face it, when was the last time the Republican Party let reality get in the way of ideology?

And isn't this the party which has a professed contempt for competence?

Kagan's definition of his ideal president oddly enough precisely fits McCain. What a coincidence...

I think everyone is missing a key point.

Kagan is not above telling a lie to mislead you. Of course experience is important.

When you read Kagan, he tells you it is OK for the virtuous to use different rule sets from all the rest.

Kagan believes his intentions are good. Thus it is OK to commit an immoral act (lying) in order to achieve virtuous results (McCain elected).

He has written so much.

His column today is simply the BS the neocons are trotting out to justify Sarah's GWB-like qualifications.

It is that simple.

TCG

Just remember: Where neocons are concerned, everything is ideology.

Someone who actually knows something about the world might not be as malleable.

Posted by: Joe Buck at 5:24 PM

The school of malleability gets my vote. Kagan, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Kissinger are all geniuses who have no need for anybody with their own ideas to pollute their beautiful conceits.

To question them in any way that doesn't just provide an opportunity for them to expound on their infallible world view is an insult.

Shruby, McBush and Palin hate to say, "I don't know" to anything. But they don't have the intellectual ability or desire to educate themselves on their own. So they are perfect vessels to be filled with neo-con crap and certainty.

And once they've started catapulting the propaganda, they're locked in. Because the one thing a hairless ape like Shruby, McBush and Palin hate worse than saying they don't know is, "I was wrong". They will take the whole world down rather than admit to being the one who screwed the pooch.

Malleability, thy name is Palin. Kagan is in love.

Vincent said: "Just remember: Where neocons are concerned, everything is ideology."

Vincent is correct.

This is all reminiscent of the Vonnegut short story, “Harrison Bergeron�, where the “intelligent� people allow an uneducated plumber to be president. The official U.S. foreign policy becomes “don’t dick with us�, and as a result the U.S. is able to intimidate the rest of the world. The phrase “don’t dick with us� still runs through my head whenever I hear a neocon speak on foreign policy.

"But I thought the Iraqis were all Muslims!" - Geo. W. Bush

Let me see if I get this...
An expert in foreign affairs says expert opinions in foreign affairs are meaningless or irrelevant. So what he says is irrelevant.
Perfect self-defeating argument.
So why would anyone waste time on this schmuck.

McCain sure seems to be surrounding himself with Founders of The Project For A New American Century. This guy Kagen is a co-founder. Randy Scheunemann is another. Other McCain advisers and infamous cronies that are signatories to that horrible organization are:
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Paul Wolfowitz
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
Richard B. Cheney
Elliott Abrams
John R. Bolton
Donald Rumsfeld
Norman Podhoretz
Richard Perle
Zalmay Khalilzad
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Charles Krauthammer
William Kristol

It is almost the entire gallery of crazies that want "Preventative War". These are the pricks that brought us the Iraq war, by tricking Bush into thinking it would lead to the entire middle east turning into a democratic Garden Of Eden. This is a nut job crew of discredited dangerous guys that are prone to making alot of mistakes. Look for more wars if McCain wins.