BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, March 2, 2005 10:53 a.m. EST
'But as an American . . .'
We hardly ever watch Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," but our TV happened to be tuned to it last night when erstwhile Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg, author of "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might" (foreword by Bill Clinton, blurb by Madeleine Albright) came on. We're not sure what possessed us to turn on the sound and watch, but we're glad we did, for it was a fascinating interview. Here's a TiVo-assisted transcript of most of it:
snip
Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can't credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what's happening in Lebanon is great, but it's not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.
snip
Money quote
Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work. No, but I think, um, it's--you know, you have changes going on in Egypt; Saudi Arabia finally had a few votes, although women couldn't participate. What's going on here in--you know, Syria's been living in the 1960s since the 1960s--it's, part of this is--
Jon Stewart skewers her.
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