Iran's Pawlenty?

Michael Goldfarb dings me. But he does so by ripping my post out of context. It is not exactly fair to write that I believe that Mousavi has the same policies as Tim Pawlenty, when in fact, I wrote:

I know it is light years away from the US but the distinction between Ahmadinejad's messianic, universalist faith and Mousavi's more realist traditionalism has some parallels in American conservatism ... You can see the split between Palinesque populism and Pawlenty-style conservatism - in a vastly different and much less democratic context, of course.

When you are a propagandist, these caveats - and the whole idea of thinking out loud in order to understand a foreign culture better - are anathema. And that's why you end up shutling between "journalism" and being a spokesman for party campaigns.