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COMMENTARY
June 18, 2008
Victory lap
People abroad, who do not like the United States, and do not wish her well, overwhelmingly support Barack Obama for President. This is clear enough from the polls in Europe, and the desultory remarks of unfriendly statesmen around the world. Alas, anti-Americanism is so rife that Mr Obama enjoys overwhelming support in almost every country. His opponent, John McCain, would only stand a chance in the U.S., Afghanistan, and Iraq. And maybe Poland.The issue is important, for practical reasons, quite beyond the pleasure it would give Bush-haters to watch an Obama inauguration. From the disordered way he has run his campaign, from the list of key supporters he has had to abandon, from his remarkably ignorant statements on foreign policy, and much else besides when away from his teleprompter, it does not follow that Obama would make a bad President. Miracles have happened in history, weak characters turned out to be strong when it counted, and many frightening challenges (one thinks of the 13th-century Mongol threat to Europe) suddenly evaporated. It is unwise to bank on miracles, however. What does follow, is that, should he become President, Barack Obama, and by extension the United States, will be severely tested. The tyrants of this world are not governed by gooey, feelgood notions about “change we can believe in.” A President who strikes them as naïve, indecisive, and poorly briefed, will soon be given the opportunity to prove otherwise. Leaders of Iran and North Korea -- of China, for that matter, even Russia -- will be eager to learn just how far they can get with the new boy, and his unimpressive advisers. They will try things on that they would not think of trying on John McCain. Things like the 1979 hostage-taking in Tehran -- or the myriad Soviet undertakings in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, Grenada -- were worth trying on a President like Jimmy Carter, who would respond with nothing beyond the odd self-righteously futile gesture. They were not worth trying on Ronald Reagan -- as, for instance, the ayatollahs realized, releasing their hostages on the day he took office. This is simply how the world works. The U.S. -- and by extension, the West -- would already be seriously exposed, by the lame-duck Bush administration, backpedalling on every plank of the Bush Doctrine. But there is a measure of protection in the election campaign itself. Tyrants who would relish an Obama presidency hardly have an interest in doing now what would only contribute to the election of McCain. Obama basks in this lull before the storm. McCain, too, would be tested -- all new Presidents are -- but not to the same degree. Moreover, he is unlikely to fail any test that hinges on a U.S. show of strength. The worry, there, would be in the relation of the new Republican President with an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress. The latter might seek to sabotage the former. Has Bush delivered the presidency into Obama’s hands? On his “victory lap” across Europe -- I use the term facetiously -- the receding President met all major heads of government. The people at the top of the leading allied Western governments -- Sarkozy of France, Berlusconi of Italy, Merkel of Germany, Brown of Britain, Fukuda of Japan, Harper of Canada -- have a fairly clear idea of the threats and dangers that confront the West, and of course would not indulge in cheap Bush-bashing even if they wanted to, from the diplomatic imperatives of their offices. But I was struck by how openly other senior figures have told the media, during the farewell tour, that they would “be glad to see the back of the little fellow.” Bush himself, who has been to my view among the most candid and honest of Presidents, confessed to British observers that he was among the authors of his own misfortunes, from the unnecessarily macho rhetoric he used in the run-up to Iraq. Certainly he was insensitive to the aesthetic requirements of European politics -- a Texas bull in a shop full of exceedingly delicate china. A worse failing was the administration’s response to the universal “Bush lied, everybody died” demonization by the Left. Bush and his allies failed to be sufficiently aggressive in response to this (and similar) nonsense -- in which the White House alone was held accountable for intelligence misjudgements that afflicted spy agencies right across the West. Domestically, Democrats who received the same garbage briefings as the President himself, through Congressional intelligence, foreign relations, and armed services committees, came to the same conclusions as Bush, and yet their own words are seldom read back to them. Five short years later, the media allow them to rewrite history. But people believe what they want to believe, and no argument avails against an opponent who is dreaming. (“Change we can believe in.”) It will take another catastrophe to wake the sleepers from their rest.rn David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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