Sunday’s New York Times Magazine story by David Samuels on President Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes has created quite a stir. It’s not every day that a senior White House official brags about how the administration has successfully manipulated what he portrays as an ignorant and compliant media, particularly on as critical and contested an issue as last summer’s nuclear deal with Iran. The media has not taken kindly to Rhodes’ remarks, especially after so many of them carried the White House’s water.

The media’s hurt feelings aside, the 9,700-word article was more important for further revealing the Obama’s Administration’s approach to the world: undo much of the approach, strategy and achievements of seventy years of American foreign policy – the alliances and partnerships, the strength and the credibility that has kept us, and much of the world, safe.