Your anti-Trumanesque quote of the day
According to the New York Times’ Jesse McKinley, the Berkeley City Council will be reversing its decision to ban the Marines from running a three-person recruitment center in the downtown. Now I could fill up this blog city council inanities, and I don’t, so why focus on this one? Because of the following quote: ?The ...
According to the New York Times' Jesse McKinley, the Berkeley City Council will be reversing its decision to ban the Marines from running a three-person recruitment center in the downtown. Now I could fill up this blog city council inanities, and I don't, so why focus on this one? Because of the following quote: ?The staff are supposed to be there to protect us from our stupidity,? said Councilwoman Betty Olds, who is 87, as feisty as a cornered rattlesnake and a leader of the retrenchment. ?And they didn?t do any better than we did.?You have to stand back and admire, in a truly perverse way, a politician who embodies the polar opposite of Harry Truman's sentiment of 'the buck stops here'. Don't blame me, blame the staff!!
According to the New York Times’ Jesse McKinley, the Berkeley City Council will be reversing its decision to ban the Marines from running a three-person recruitment center in the downtown. Now I could fill up this blog city council inanities, and I don’t, so why focus on this one? Because of the following quote:
?The staff are supposed to be there to protect us from our stupidity,? said Councilwoman Betty Olds, who is 87, as feisty as a cornered rattlesnake and a leader of the retrenchment. ?And they didn?t do any better than we did.?
You have to stand back and admire, in a truly perverse way, a politician who embodies the polar opposite of Harry Truman’s sentiment of ‘the buck stops here’. Don’t blame me, blame the staff!!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
More from Foreign Policy

Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it’s no accident that China brokered it.

The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.

Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.

How China’s Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there’s less to Beijing’s diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.