"Nobody saw it coming" (Condoleezza Rice)

A number of people have noticed this little gem by George Will from a pundit roundtable on the ABC TV show "This Week with George Stephanopoulos":

When, against the urgings of the Israelis, we pressed for the elections that overthrew Fatah, who we were backing and put in Hamas, Condoleezza Rice said nobody saw it coming. Those four words are the epitaph of this administration.

Too true. Other people may see disasters coming up, but they never do.

=> On the other hand, before we start getting too enthralled with George Will's perspicacity, it's only fair to mention that he also said some pretty absurd things in that discussion. For example:

Elections haven't gone well in Lebanon, where it produced Hezbollah.

If George Will really believes that "elections" are what "produced Hezbollah," then he is quite ignorant of the past quarter-century of Lebanese history. Actually, I doubt he's that stupid or uninformed. I suspect that he simply got so carried away with sneering at the idea that "elections" and promoting "democracy" are a good thing that he couldn't resist tossing in Hezbollah as part of his case.

=> But even George Will is on target sometimes. As he says, the repeated claim that "nobody saw it coming" captures a lot about the whole record of this catastrophically incompetent and irresponsible administration.

--Jeff Weintraub