If you’ve ever heard a State Department briefing, or briefing by any other foreign ministry, you probably don't think of foreign policy as an exercise in “straight talk.” Yet there was John McCain in Los Angeles the other day, driving his “Straight Talk Express” right down the middle of the road. The word “Bush” was not uttered, neither was “conservative” nor “Reagan.” Those words might have given the speech a more aggressive or ideological tone. In fact, there were no sharp right turns at all, except when discussing expelling Russia from the G8, which the Republican candidate said would be just punishment for “Russia's nuclear blackmail and cyber attacks.” In short, McCain said he was an idealist, but a realistic one. James Baker, the savvy ex Secretary of State, used a slightly different formulation in describing the man he now advises on foreign policy: “John is what I think I am, a principled pragmatist…He prefers to get things done rather than to insist on ideological purity.”
Accordingly, McCain's Los Angeles speech was meant to position him as a foreign affairs leader, but not a unilateralist. He wants to support democracy and promises, quoting the Declaration of Independence, to show “a decent respect for the opinion of Mankind.” He supports a Western Hemispheric free trade zone. And, most of all, he says he believes that the U.S. has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq until the country is stable.
Fighting “radical Islamic extremism” remains for McCain “the transcendent challenge of our time,” but one that requires more consultation with U.S. allies.
And it is precisely McCain's stated willingness to discuss with friends and allies and to listen to them that ably casts McCain as a proponent of U.S. public diplomacy:
Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I have called for major changes in how our government faces the challenge of radical Islamic extremism by much greater resources for and integration of civilian efforts to prevent conflict and to address post-conflict challenges. Our goal must be to win the “hearts and minds” of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.
All this straight talk and public diplomacy did not cover some of the most troubling questions, such as: How does a nation in recession continue to pay a $12 billion a month Iraq war bill that it handles by borrowing from countries that disagree with the war?
Postscripts:
In my Tuesday post, I commented on Bush's forthcoming travel to Europe. The White House has announced since then that Bush will travel to Sochi at the end of the trip for a separate bilateral with Putin on the anti-missile radar dispute. Perhaps the trip could lead to a tangible breakthrough after all.
By the way, both the Obama and the McCain campaigns have hit upon a fund-raising device: give the campaign money and win the chance to have some face time with the candidate! The winner of the Obama raffle gets to attend a small dinner with Barack; the winner of the McCain contest gets to join the candidate on — you guessed it — the “Straight Talk Express.”
