The Left has certainly never relied on the proposition that fools are born every minute -- I thought that was what advertising was for -- and I have never heard a Leftie ever once remark that diplomacy was a messy business. In my experience of diplomacy, diplomacy is tedious business, left to dullards who find trade missions interesting. The Left has usually relied on propositions such as a society is judged by how well it treats its most vulnerable, as opposed to how it treats its most powerful. Just because Christopher Hitchens is an idiot, and the Chinese think they are the moral superiors of the rest of the world (which many of them do, and which of us does not?), doesn't mean that Henry Kissinger isn't a murdering swine. (Thought for the day!)
yours, Peter T.