I just question Friedman's relevance at this juncture. The left pilloried him for his early support for the idea of the Iraq War, never mind the war itself. He was a contrarian when it came to the war, and the left turned on him. If you go to any "left of center" website, almost everything written about Friedman is negative.

Then he takes a sabbatical, writes a global warming book, and comes in at the tail end of the Bush administration with a bunch of left-friendly ideas (how can you go wrong with global warming??), and offers advice about the automakers that counters much of his previous opinions about that industry (even these columns themselves are all over the place). Is it anything else than a gradual restoration?

I also question what idea(s) Friedman will posit at this point that sharply contradict anything the new administration puts out there as a proposed policy; time will tell, but the fact that one of his recent columns evoked biblical imagery when decribing the new President ( And so it came to pass. . .), Ihowobjective he will be? Time will tell. . .

For my part, I stay away from pundits now, and use published scholars to research and support any position I support in written work these day. . .