Holbrooke Death Leaves Washington, and Democrats, Scrambling

Fouad Ajami offers some reflections on the late ambassador, "Richard Holbrooke: Kennedy Democrat":

Holbrooke apprenticed, and quarreled, with the giants. He kept the company of such great American statesmen and presidential advisers as Averell Harriman, Clark Clifford and Cyrus Vance. He was introduced to diplomacy when he was an impressionable boy by Dean Rusk, who would serve John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as secretary of state.

He came into his own amid the stirrings of the New Frontier, when American power sat astride the world. In the preface of his Bosnian chronicles, he would recall that time: "Today, public service has lost much of the aura it had when John F. Kennedy asked what we could do for our country. To hear that phrase before it became a cliché was electrifying, and it led many in my generation to enter public service. For me, it was the Foreign Service which I joined right after graduating from college. Less than a year later I found myself in Saigon."

American patriotism and American liberalism were still tethered together as Holbrooke made his way. There may have been hubris in that outlook. Our country would be bloodied in distant places, it would learn that the world wouldn't always bend to our will. But the lodestar remained that essential belief that American power could be a force for the good in the world beyond our shores.

I guess they don't make 'em like that anymore, Democrats that is.

Also at NYT, "Strong American Voice in Diplomacy and Crisis." And also, "Post-Holbrooke Question: ‘What Now?’"