Follyanna? (Adam Garfinkle, FPRI)

Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 classic, Pollyanna, bequeathed to the English language a new and concise term for oblivious, overweening optimism and its dangers. Barbara Tuchman’s flawed but popular 1984 book, The March of Folly, described what happens when a political elite’s failure to B-team its own complacency leads to catastrophic violence. Put them together and one gets Follyanna—a dangerous inability to see the world and its bad actors for what they are because idealist illusions blur and color one’s metaphorical eyesight. That is possibly the best description yet of the Obama Administration’s general orientation to U.S. foreign and national security policy.

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/follyanna