ASTONISHING?:

Why Bush is still the man to beat: Much of the world hates him, but many Americans think their President is the man for the age (Graham Barrett, November 29, 2003 , The Age)

Get used to the thought of another five years of George Bush as the most powerful person on earth. Astonishing as it may seem, he is moving into re-election mode with just about everything going for him.

This appears counter-intuitive. Just look at the laundry list that will be making the papers between now and next November. The Middle East is an expensive shambles, the case for invading Iraq is still shifting from one confection to another, the rise of terrorism has exposed the most dramatic intelligence failure since Pearl Harbour, the US deficit is the biggest in history, several million American jobs have been lost, environmental pollution is worsening, American diplomacy is in tatters and American global popularity is to be found in a compost bin.

Bush would seem to possess no chance of staying on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until early 2009. Why, then, are the US Democrats so worried?

They know that American presidents are not elected by sophisticated European or Australian critics or by Arab adolescents throwing stones in the streets of the Gaza Strip, but by a small number of swinging voters in places called Sarasota or Louisville, who are starting to resent the antipathy of the outside world. They vote for the individual, not the party or policy platform. [...]

A hint of steel has entered the heart of many American voters in what remains one of the most patriotic countries in the world, persuading them - for now - that those body bags from Baghdad are a tragic but necessary price to pay for preserving their nation and its values.

There is a countervailing resentment among the American people, who are learning what a former British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, said about another great power in history: "When we ran the world in the 19th century, which I think we did rather well, we were cordially disliked. Jealousy and hostility, not gratitude, was our experience."

As a former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, puts it: "American power worldwide is at its zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir." It is a combination that compels many American voters to rally behind an incumbent who, however flawed he may appear, possesses one big advantage.

Unlike his predecessor, Bush appears strong, decisive, focused, moral and relentless. These are characteristics to which Americans, or indeed most people, warm in a time of national stress.

Pollution? Do foreigners know anything about this country that they don't read in DNC handouts?

MORE:
Multilateral Mantras: The fantasies of the old world meet the realities of the new. (Victor Davis Hanson, November 26, 2003, National Review)

American and European intellectuals think they can explain the current furor directed at the United States. In fact, they have fashioned a standard exegesis that goes back to the last decade or so of American foreign-policy efforts. Our supposed post-9/11 unilateralism is summed up by something like this: chances lost; sympathy wasted; opportunities let slip; dialogue spurned; etc.

That is, after eight careful years of Clintonian multilateralism — characterized by deference to the U.N., consultation with the EU, and various apologies to aggrieved countries from Greece to South Africa — the United States was once again (say, by 2000?), ever so slowly, beginning to be liked in the world. Indeed, we were on the collective bus, so to speak, and supported the foundations for a new global framework that would give us racial bliss at Durban, environmental salvation at Kyoto, and international justice at The Hague.

We all wished it was true. Those who had doubts kept quiet for the most part — lest they appear as the dour and glum Reaganites who had once caricatured Jimmy Carter's human-rights policies as naïve and conducive to subsequent hostage-taking, SS-10s, and Afghanistan.

Indeed, we are now supposed to be quite nostalgic about the old aura of multilateral harmony. Everyone from Madeline Albright to Al Gore lectures us about how we were once beloved of the Europeans and admired by the Arabs. But then the story darkens, as Bush administration boorishness, ineptness, and chauvinism forfeit all their predecessors' hard-earned capital, the fruit of careful past diplomacy. Perhaps the hysterical slurs about "Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld" reflect the deep hurt that former officials presently feel when they travel abroad and are no longer treated with the deference of old. Their apologia "We tried to tell them" is met by their sympathetic hosts' "Don't worry, we know it's them, not you."

But how accurate — or important — is the charge of unilateralism?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 28, 2003 1:50 PM