Freedom Line Blog

At The Daily Beast, Leslie Gelb discusses the other January 1961 presidential speech that should get more attention from Americans today.  It was delivered by outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower.

Here are the Gelbian nuggets:

(1)   Put the national interest ahead of politics

(2)   There are no quick fixes to crises

(3)   Balance is the best strategy

(4)   Beware of spending beyond our means

(5)   Guard against the power of special interests

The fifth point is best remembered as the warning against the military-industrial complex.  The fourth point seems especially pertinent today with a $14 trillion debt that will surely “mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren (while) risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”

The entirety of Ike’s farewell address can be found here.

There’s an interesting column in Foreign Policy I commend to anyone trying to make sense out of the realignment going on in the Democratic and Republican parties.  With former president George W. Bush firmly entrenched in the public’s mind as a neoconservative nation-builder, President Barack Obama did what most political opponents do – adopt the opposite strategy.

Thus, we’ve got a Commander-in-Chief who looks and sounds a lot like former president George H. W. Bush, the highest ranking member of the foreign policy “realist” school.  To my lights, foreign policy realism is shorthand for “The world is a really dangerous place run by a lot of bad people.  Since there’s nothing we can do to change it we might as well make nice with some of the friendlier dictators.”

Perhaps that notion is correct; at least in general.  Such a view of the world helps explain why President Obama can’t seem to summon his emotions when pro-democracy marchers are killed in the streets of Tehran.  Bad people do bad things, but hey; it could be worse.

But while Jacob Heilbrunn’s Foreign Policy article does a nice job of recounting the ebb and flow of Realism’s popularity with Republicans, he seems to miss a more obvious point about the kind of politician who would be attracted to the philosophy.  Consider the presidents Heilbrunn identifies as fans: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and now Barack Obama.  Their commonality?  Each president is motivated by pessimism about the world around him.

Eisenhower’s most memorable speech was his farewell address warning about a military-industrial complex.  Nixon had enemies’ lists.  Bush didn’t see the value of “the vision thing” and preferred to talk shop with elites instead of connecting with everyday citizens.  And then there’s Obama.  He might be the most negatively-oriented president we’ve had since Nixon.  The reason America needs “Hope” and “Change” is because everything is currently broken.  Besides, who are Americans to lecture the world on morals when it’s so obvious to Progressive faculty members that the United States is probably at fault for their problems?

Foreign policy realism may be a necessary corrective to neoconservative empire-building, but realism’s lack of popularity doesn’t mean it is right; just that if offers an unsatisfying view of the world.