Foreign Policy: Into the Breach

George Will once remarked that we aspire to be Jeffersonian, but govern as Hamiltonians.

Few have been able to bring that creative tension to America's Foreign Policy.

I have hope for Obama, but I don't think he is going to get to it. He's going to be torn every which way, with clean-up from the Bush Administration.

And, an Obama doctrine is not something I think he might be able to do, in an afternoon, shorthand, they way John Kennedy might have, I suppose.

Personally, I think the terrain of foreign policy is done a disservice, today, by applying too much the old labels of "realist" and "idealist". I think everyone is a realistic-idealist, now, except for the fringes.

If Obama - no, if the Democrats - want to amount to more than "not Republican", to be a true party of ideas, to gain the whip handle on innovation in the political sphere, they ought to re-cast FP in new terms. I think that is easy to do, frankly, that the time is ripe for it, as a matter of content/substance, not just the changing of the political tides in Washington, currently.

Sadly, I don't suspect the establishment is up for it. They are content to run 80% of Foreign Policy prescription as anti-war. The rest is ... to be managed by whomever is Sec. of State. No "core" set of principles to be enunciated by a new President.

I have hope for Obama, but I don't think he is going to get to it. He's going to be torn every which way, with clean-up from the Bush Administration. An Obama doctrine is not something I think he might be able to do, in an afternoon, shorthand, they way John Kennedy might have, I suppose.

Proof? None, but there is this tell, from AS:

I don't know whether Obama fits more the "liberal institutionalist" role or the realist...-AS

That's fairly astounding, but isn't it true for most of us? And the fault lies with us, not in our stars, with a sense that 'the world' is ... French and "Over There!"

Once again, into the breach we go ...

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