Foreign policy is a complicated and bottomless topic, which forces politicians to address it with abstract words and punchy sound bites. Smart politicians know the difference between the messy realities and the simple pictures they paint. The danger lies with politicians who mistake the slogans for reality.

Jeb Bush asserts that when it comes to these matters, he should not be confused with his brother or his father. "I am my own man," he declared in a speech Wednesday before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

In fact, it would be unfair to suggest that he got all his ideas about the world from his brother and father. It would be equally off-base to suggest that he has any of his own. What he, like most of the other Republicans who may run for president, has are muscular-sounding bromides that substitute for understanding.
..................................
Bush acts as though saying something is tantamount to making it happen. He demands that we force Iran to stop all nuclear enrichment, without explaining how. Its nuclear program, as he didn't mention, expanded while his brother was president.

In his immortal essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell identified the problem with this sort of advocacy. "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks," he wrote. Our use of English, he said, "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."