A common quip was that NATO would have to go out of area or out of business. This became particularly important after the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, shifted the focus of American foreign policy toward transnational terrorism.

This, too, runs counter to the economic mainstream. Free market ideologues don t want governments to think at all and Keynesians want governments to think only about the short run, because they take to an extreme John Maynard Keynes famous quip, In the long run we are all dead.

MADRID US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when asked about American support for the notorious Nicaraguan despot Anastasio Somoza, purportedly replied, He may be a son of a bitch, but he s our son of a bitch. Whether or not the quip is apocryphal, it sums up a longstanding Western approach to much of the world and one that underpinned US foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

DENVER Critics of America s Middle East policies are reminiscent of Woody Allen s quip in Annie Hall The food at this place is really terrible...and such small portions. The United States is seen as the culprit behind many of the regions ills, and yet it is accused of not being sufficiently engaged, of leading from behind, of failing to support democracy, of abandoning its friends, and so on.

Chávez excelled in ridiculing his political enemies, but he was too much of a narcissist to approach the end with the kind of humor that, according to Suetonius, inspired Emperor Vespasian s deathbed quip Oh dear, I must be turning into a God. The grotesque idea of embalming Chávez s body was finally discarded precisely because of the damage suffered by the corpse during its display to the masses in a chaotic exercise in political manipulation.