When a country is locked in a protracted struggle with a vicious foe, its political leaders normally seek to emphasize the depth of their nation's commitment to the cause. Winston Churchill set the gold standard for this brand of rhetoric with his famous proclamation, “[w]e shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle.”
The point was, in part, to galvanize the British people. Perhaps more importantly, it was designed to send a message to the world that England's commitment to fighting was credible and not just one of those policy choices that democracies make and unmake as the polls twist around or personnel is shuffled this way or that. It wasn't Churchill who was committed to fighting, but the British Empire and its inhabitants.
Karl Rove, top adviser to the president of the United States, chose in his recent remarks to the New York Conservative Party to take the opposite tack of minimizing America's commitment to fighting the forces of global jihad. As he tells it, support for the cause is inextricably bound up with support for his boss. Perhaps the 51 percent or so of the population that voted for George W. Bush last November wants to fight terrorism. Perhaps it's only the 40-something percent that approves of him at the moment. Either way, the broad picture painted is clear: Support for combating al-Qaeda is narrow and weak, the country is deeply divided on the issue, and the continuation of the struggle continually in doubt, hanging in the balance.
Many on the left see this as a gaffe, an opportunity for liberals to express outrage at Rove's rhetorical excess and maybe even take a scalp in return for the humiliating and unwarranted climb-down recently forced on Senator Dick Durbin for his utterly unobjectionable observation that torture and abuse of detainees is the sort of thing we associate with totalitarian dictatorships rather than the United States of America.
Rove is smarter than that. His remarks, deliberately designed to provoke, paint liberals into an awkward corner. We must not protest loudly that, no, we, too, supported the president when he took the country to war in Afghanistan. The ball is thus tossed back into the right wing's corner to pass judgment on where are the bounds of acceptable dissent from the political program governing the country.
It was a smart speech -- if, that is, your primary concern is winning elections here in the United States. Viewed from the perspective of foreign policy and national security, however, it's a total disaster, the reverse of Churchill's rightly celebrated rhetorical strategy. It sends to friends, foes, and fence-sitters around the world a message of weakness and confusion, painting a picture of a United States on the verge of surrender. Commitment to the defense of the nation is associated not with the nation itself -- an entity sure to endure for the foreseeable future -- but with a narrow political coalition likely to lose its grasp on power.
That the White House would take such an approach is no surprise; it's always been more interested in winning elections than securing the nation.
In North Korea, it long pursued a policy of isolation and disengagement that failed miserably. Admitting that this had been a mistake and reversing course would have been politically damaging. What's more, it would have deprived the administration of a potent line of attack against John Kerry -- that his preferred strategy of engagement was weak and dangerous. Now, with the election done, word has come that the president is prepared to reverse course and adopt Kerry's policy. Late is better than never, but sooner would have been better than later. Better, that is, for the country, but worse for the Bush campaign. During the run-up to the Iraq War, the White House sought to exaggerate, rather than minimize, trans-Atlantic tensions with an eye to characterizing its domestic opposition as un-American. As a political strategy, it worked. As a policy, it doomed the administration's hopes of securing substantial European assistance in the postwar stabilization phase of the conflict, and many people have died as a result.
Something similar has been at work with John Bolton's nomination to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. The administration's hope, or so it tells us, is that the next ambassador will push the UN on a path of reform. This is a worthy goal, and a rather uncontroversial one -- it would be easy to find a well-respected Republican who could implement such an agenda with strong bipartisan support. Instead, we got Bolton, the least-well-suited candidate imaginable. Now, it seems Bush may engage in the further provocation of giving Bolton a recess appointment. The result of it all his been a less effective push for reform, but a more effective push to portray Bush as the true reformer.
As a re-election strategy, this was bad, shameful stuff. In the present day, however, it seems to lack any real rationale whatsoever. Second terms are for governing, but it seems nobody inside the White House knows how to play the game any differently.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
