NYT: "Wolfowitz Nod Follows Spread of Conservative Philosophy"

NYT reporter Todd Purdum writes in a news analysis today, "By sending Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank, and another outspoken administration figure, John R. Bolton, to be ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Bush all but announced his belief that both institutions could benefit from unconventional thinking and stern discipline." How might we as mass communication researchers conceptualize the history and movement of the "unconventional thinking" that these two nominees epitomize? Were their stated, published, and relatively consistent policy positions on globalization, militarization, and democratization, for example, part of any kind of public policy debate in the Republican primary season of the 2000 election, the partisan debates of the 2004 election, or at any other newsworthy moment? What geography of knowledge production lies behind this extraordinary shift in US representation to perhaps the two most significant (and different) institutions of globalization?