So, round one of the 2008 foreign policy debate goes to … Barack Obama? Improbable as it seems, in the first direct rhetorical showdown of the general election campaign — over a question, foreign policy “toughness”, that’s been a perceived Democratic weakness since Vietnam — it was the guy with the thin foreign policy resumé, suspected by some of his compatriots of being a Muslim, who out-punched the war hero with the extensive resume.
And shall I add that the one with the thin resumé and the strange name has a dodgy position on the question at hand, and yet still won? Here’s how it unfolded. Two weeks ago, speaking before the Knesset in Jerusalem, George Bush compared “some” Democrats to those who thought in 1939 that war might have been avoided if we’d just been able to sit down with Hitler and talk some sense into him. This was, despite some White House demurrals, a clear shot at Obama, who has repeatedly announced his intention to negotiate personally as president, and “without preconditions”, with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez.
John McCain, that same Thursday morning, was giving a speech in part about the need to move beyond the partisan bickering of the past decade. Within an hour or two, following Bush’s lead, McCain attacked Obama: “What does he want to talk about with Ahmadinejad, who said Israel is a stinking corpse?” The Obama campaign emailed reporters accusing Bush of launching “a false political attack”.
Now here’s the important part. In the past two presidential campaigns, that’s where this would have ended. The Democrat “responded” for the record, but somewhat perfunctorily, while the Republicans got their point across: the Democrats are appeasers, the Democratic nominee wants to talk to terrorists and he won’t keep the country safe.
Game, set, match. This is how Bush built margins of trust with voters over Al Gore and John Kerry on national security questions. Invoke appeasement of Hitler, toss in Israel’s safety: this is exactly the kind of thing that sent Gore and Kerry running for the hills. Even Bill Clinton, who knew how to return a punch, would have tried to change the subject back to the economy.
But the current version of the story ends differently. Recently, in South Dakota, Obama gave an extended and aggressive press conference in which he hit back hard. Bush and McCain, he told Americans, “are trying to fool you. They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling you the truth.” He ticked off the lies that were told about Iraq and the benefits that would redound from making war there, noting that not one of the promises had come to pass.
The headline that afternoon on the influential blog of Mark Halperin, of Time magazine, conveyed the take-away: “Bam!! Bop!!!! Bash!!” After the Kerry loss of 2004, Democrats began to vow: we understand what happened. We’re not going to let ourselves get outboxed and intimidated next time around, especially on national security. There was every reason in the world to think this was an empty promise. If Hillary Clinton were the nominee, it wouldn’t be exactly empty, because the Clinton camp does know how to return fire. But it would be a dissatisfying thing for most Democrats to watch, because Clinton’s returns of serve would consist of hawkish statements designed to prove that she could be just as tough as the Republicans (witness her recent promise to “obliterate” Iran).
Obama is doing something altogether different. He is standing for an alternative vision of how the US should operate in the world, and he is defending it tooth and nail. I’m not sold on the idea that negotiations without preconditions with hostile powers are the world’s best strategy. If the US had some leverage over Iran that might be one thing, but, in our current state, we have little. Still, this is one of those cases where the symbolic message of what Obama did last Friday is more important, for now, than the substance. He said: These people have screwed up foreign policy and security. I have a different way of doing things. And I’m not ceding an inch.
This is a good manifestation of why so many Americans have rallied to Obama as the breath of fresh air the country needs right now. He’s taking some interesting chances. Could he fail? Of course. Take Cuba. He has signalled that he’d dramatically alter the US’s hard-line Cuba policy. He’s not alone in thinking it’s outdated. Brent Scowcroft, a Republican foreign-policy high priest who worked for George Bush Sr, said last week that the American embargo “makes no sense” any more.
This freaks some people out. And in electoral terms, it makes them think that Obama has thrown away Florida, home of a large, conservative Cuban-American community. But Florida’s Latino population is no longer majority-Cuban. And just this month, the news broke that more Latinos in Florida are Democrats than Republicans — a major historical shift. Could it be that Obama is on to something?
Make no mistake, the Republicans will put him through his foreign policy paces yet. But round one suggested that 2008 might look pretty different than the last two bouts. — Â