Two related items caught my attention today.  One from the radio during my morning commute.  I tuned in mid sentence on something Jay Weber was reading.  The language sounded like something from a Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher speech.  I kept listening and to my amazement it was the from the President of France, yesterday in his speech to Congress.  See text of the speech by President Sarkozy

The other item was a post by Don Surber who had this observation: about that speech.  It was forwarded from a good buddy.  It got me thinking about our role in the world and just how damn difficult the tightrope of foreign policy really must be.

As to the Don Surber posting;  I am always amused and somewhat curious as to why we should give it so much weight.  It's only news when it's bad, never news when it's good, and, for the last 7 years at least, if it wasn't used as a political bludgeon, we wouldn't hear about it at all.  The deafening media silence on Sarkozy's speech yesterday is proof enough.  In it was some of most beautiful soaring rhetoric unabashedly praising the greatness of America you are ever likely to hear, yet the coverage, if there was any, was mostly to do with our differences on the Kyoto treaty.  What the?

I might agree agree that the Surber post could rightfully be labeled a propaganda puff piece, but not without noting that the fear of being accused of propagandizing, or worse, making Bush look good, yields a palpable yet definite reluctance, if not outright avoidance, of reporting good news. 

Here's the thing, we are the sole superpower, as such we will always have enemies borne of resentment and a target on our back.  It comes with the territory, pre-existed this Presidency by decades, and will persist until we are replaced.  This is the reality regardless of who occupies the oval office.   

The left/right debate on foreign relations seems to be one of either doing what it takes to get others to like us or doing what it takes to stay on top, the popularity / pragmatism continuum if you will.  These goals are too often misunderstood as conflicting, but the harsh truth, and what makes for extremely heavy lifting, is that instead of being competing factors they are really interdependent, too much of one will compromise the other.  

No leader worth his salt would willingly diminish the stature of their country for the sake of world popularity yet in America today there are many who seem perfectly willing to do exactly that.  Conversely, the leader who blithely pursues the preservation of that status without regard to world opinion deserves the resulting criticism.  That is to say that some of the criticism leveled W may well be legitimate, providing you bear in mind the basis for the criticism was mostly presented through the lens of the mainstream media.

To avowed Bush haters the most unnerving part about Surbers post, not stressed emphatically enough in my view, is not that George W Bush is being directly validated by allied heads of state, but indirectly by those who elected them.  Democracy at work on its own behalf.  Thoughtful sober constituencies in more and more countries are coming to believe it is in their best interest to strengthen their alliance with the United States - - and no one can reasonably claim, by any stretch, that it was the result of President Bush's talent for making popular decisions.            

A friendly shout out to JB, a commenter to my friends e-mail who actually offered the Oslo Peace Accords as a foreign policy accomplishment from the 1990's.  That reveals where he places himself on the the popularity pragmatism continuum but also serves to contrast the left/right foreign policy philosophies rather nicely.  The left tends to measure success based on good intentions and the right on results.  Making nice with Arafat was the popular thing to do at the time, but it did nothing to make us safer. Nothing.