Ben Smith profiles Steve Clemons, the foreign policy blogger and man-about-town. This part is completely hilarious:
Clemons’s ubiquitous social role is coupled with a policy agenda that puts him at odds even with many of his friends. His chief causes include an end to America’s war in Afghanistan, strong U.S. and international pressure on Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and a broad opening to Cuba. And that brew of potentially polarizing policy positions has made Clemons his share of enemies or, rather, Clemons being Clemons: frenemies.
“I consider Steve a friend, and in some ways, I admire him. He’s probably the most successful social climber in the history of Washington,” said Josh Block, the former spokesman for the pro-Israel group AIPAC. Clemons said he also considers Block a friend, despite their differences.
Block continued, in frenemy mode: “It’s especially impressive, given that Steve is really such a generalist and doesn’t know a tremendous amount about most of these issues, and his ideas are so far out of the mainstream.”
The interesting tension is that he's deeply dedicated to an ideological agenda -- Nixonian realism, and especially making that ideology the dominant foreign policy worldview of liberals -- but he's even more dedicated to the cause of professional networking. I expect he will continue to remain on good terms with Josh Block.