Politics & Power Quote by Dick Morris

Idealism is treated here less as a virtue than as a budgeting error: spend it everywhere and you end up bankrupt at home. Morris’s line works because it frames foreign policy not as a moral stage but as a map with gradients of obligation. The key phrase, “makes no distinction,” is a scalpel aimed at humanitarian or democracy-spreading impulses that refuse triage. In his telling, the problem isn’t caring about the world; it’s pretending every crisis is equally “ours,” and then acting surprised when voters revolt.

The subtext is domestic politics, not diplomacy. “Does no good for America” narrows the standard of judgment to electoral patience and national stamina. Morris is warning that moral language becomes politically self-defeating when it produces open-ended commitments. Idealism, in this frame, isn’t noble overreach; it’s the fastest route to backlash.

His second sentence is a neat piece of historical compression: Versailles, Korea, Vietnam as recurring hangovers after grand projects collide with limits. “Weariness” does heavy lifting, implying that interventionism leaves a residue in public life - cynicism, thrift, suspicion of elites - that can be activated anytime leaders sound too crusading. The move is strategic: by invoking those eras, he borrows their emotional weather (disillusionment, fatigue, “never again”) without litigating the specifics.

Contextually, this is the language of post-Cold War and post-9/11 debates where “national interest” became a rhetorical permission slip: a way to argue for restraint while sounding tough-minded, not isolationist. It’s a pitch for selective engagement, sold through the fear of yet another national come-down.