Like scores of other think-tankers, I lined up outside DAR Constitution Hall last week for the GOP foreign-policy debate cosponsored by CNN, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The hoops you had to jump through to get in were a perfect metaphor for 10 years of maddening security theatre. I went through three checkpoints before reaching an apparently non-operational metal detector. (A guard waved me through before I could take out my keys and cellphone. No alarm went off.)

The debate itself was just as frustrating — an exercise in competitive hysteria masquerading as steely resolve.

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