Foreign Policy and the Campaigns

What is "tough, direct diplomacy?"

That phrase from Senator Obama's acceptance speech tonight seems to do a fairly good job of capturing how he portrays his foreign policy. He critiques the "empty rhetoric" of President Bush and Senator McCain. The implication is that he would both provide more substance to the rhetoric and tone down the rhetoric.

Which is a little difficult to reconcile with pledges to "build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease."

So is Senator Obama a hopelessly cosmopolitan idealist? Or a hard-nosed pragmatist?

Probably both. Probably neither, too.

Foreign policy has a way of subverting partisan stereotypes. Conservatives are all for an overly limited, interest-based foreign policy that neglects other nations, until they're deeply committed to ending tyranny the world over, or at least remaking a country or two through massive commitments of troops. Liberals are supposedly enthrall to open-ended commitments, airy values, and a globalism that fails to put American interests first. Until, of course, they are the ones pointing out the limits to American power and the need to take seriously the security concerns of Iran and North Korea and make deals with them.

These are all stereotypes, of course. But they're interesting because somehow two diametrically opposed stereotypes are both simultaneously widespread about both parties.

That's a result, more than anything, of the unique status of the presidency. The office has pretty much unchecked authority in international affairs - far more independence than most other democracies' executives. And as a result, the party tends to take on the general bent and frame of mind of the guy in charge, and party ideology will usually bend to accommodate. The process is probably helped along by the fact that, most of the time, economic and social issues are more important to most voters, so the parties have tended to organize themselves around both issues. Realists and internationalists and neoconservatives and isolationists all can find niches in both parties.

It also makes figuring out a candidate's likely foreign policy pretty tough. Few of the foreign policies any president offered while on the trail have lasted much beyond the first year. But it makes it even more important to evaluate a candidate's general attitude and approach.

Senator Obama's speech did not include anything that indicated his approach to me - it was mostly just politics, which is appropriate for a convention speech anyway. I doubt Senator McCain will say much substantive or interesting in his convention speech either. But how the two respond to each other, and to events, in the next several weeks could shed light. What does Obama mean by "tough diplomacy?" How would McCain actually give shape to his get-tough instincts? Both have given some indications of this in the last few months and years. But the details that surface in the campaign will be much more instructive than the broad stereotypes that have already attached to both.