Lowry coming down with a small case of Hopenchange fever

It’s as moderate as any Democrat’s national-security picks could possibly get. Just when it seemed that the hawkish Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party was dead forever, a jerry-built version of it is making a comeback via the impending administration of a man championed by anti-war zealots. Yes, God does have a sense of humor…

Obama’s national-security choices signal that he’s going to build off the late-second-term “realist” Bush foreign policy, giving it a fresh branding as “change” internationally and augmenting our tools of “soft power” (something Secretary Gates has repeatedly plugged). The one true progressive on his team, Susan Rice, has been relegated to ambassador to the United Nations, where wishful thinking is mostly harmless and soothes the bureaucrats.