Since gun regulation failed the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, some pundits have trotted out the "failure of presidential leadership" meme. See Maureen Dowd, Ron Fournier, Dana Milbank, or Peggy Noonan for example. To most political scientists -- hell, to most people who've taken an advanced poli sci course --  this a pretty unpersuasive argument. Andrew Rudalevige, Ezra Klein, Seth Masket, Jonathan Bernstein, and Jonathan Chait have all pushed back fiercely on this question. 

Now, that said, pushback on the leadership question is difficult for two reasons. First, there's a lot of the political commentariat that wants the world to operate along the Aaron Sorkin Big Speech Theory of Politics. Klein is correct to observe that "the world isn't here to please you," but it's amazing how much wishcasting can make it easy to ignore. 

The second problem is that in pushing back, it is too easy for critics to be interpreted as saying that presidential leadership does not exist. So critics should point out moments or opportunities for presidential leadership to better define the boundaries of this concept. 

For one example, I give you Randall Archibold and Michael Shear's story in the New York Times about Obama's Mexico trip. The title gives it away:  "Obama Seeks to Banish Stereotypical Image of Mexico." 

President Obama, in speech to high school and university students here, said Friday that it was time to banish the stereotypical Mexico of violence and people fleeing across borders and embrace the new image of a strengthening democracy and economy.

“I have come to Mexico because it is time to put old mind-sets aside,’’ Mr. Obama said to vigorous applause from hundreds of students at the National Anthropology Museum. “It’s time to recognize new realities, including the impressive progress in today’s Mexico. For even as Mexicans continue to make courageous sacrifices for the security of your country, even as Mexicans in the countryside and in neighborhoods not far from here struggle to give their children a better life, it’s also clear that a new Mexico is emerging.'’

Although poverty remains deep and wages have stagnated, Mr. Obama focused on the positive signs of the economy, including growth measurements that exceed those in the United States, a surge in the manufacturing and technology industries and rising levels of middle class Mexicans.

OK, this matters. As the Chicago Council on Global Affairs demonstrated in their poll this week, Americans have a dim and distorted view of Mexico. Mention that country, and the three issues that spring immediately to mind are drugs, illegal immigration, and the "giant sucking sound" of NAFTA. In point of fact, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle and outward Mexican FDI has exploded. Mexico's new president is pretty popular, and the next head of the WTO might be Mexican as well. Most Americans know nothing contained in the last two sentences. 

One thing presidents can do with their bully pulpit is try to correct public misperceptions that are detrimental to the national interest ... like U.S. views on Mexico. Let's not kid ourselves -- one visit and one speech alone won't do that. But it can start to alter public attitudes on the margins. That's a start -- and very useful example of positive presidential leadership. 

Like other wonks, I watched last night's State of the Union address with a mixture of curiosity and whiskey. As I noted a few days ago, each State of the Union address contains some statements that history will judge rather harshly. Initially that was my focus in listening to last night's speech. That was quickly supplanted by a more interesting undercurrent to Obama's text, however. 

Foreign policy wonks like Fred Kaplan have argued that there wasn't much foreign policy content in the speech. That's true only if one has a rather narrow definition of foreign policy. What was striking to me was Obama's global justifications for a lot of his economic policy. Throughout his speech, he used the specter of foreign economic threats to prod Congress into action.  Consider the following: 

Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation: How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs?....

After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.

There are things we can do, right now, to accelerate this trend....

After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years....

Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.....

America’s energy sector is just one part of an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair. Ask any CEO where they’d rather locate and hire: a country with deteriorating roads and bridges, or one with high-speed rail and internet; high-tech schools and self-healing power grids. The CEO of Siemens America – a company that brought hundreds of new jobs to North Carolina – has said that if we upgrade our infrastructure, they’ll bring even more jobs....

Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they’re ready for a job....

In each of these passages, Obama was using comparative language to contrast the United States with other countries -- or, as he would put it, other magnets for jobs. The explicit thesis is that unless the United States makes the necessary investments, scarce jobs will leave American shores. 

Obama has used this kind of rhetoric on the campaign trail and in previous SOTUs. It reveals a somewhat mercantiilist worldview, one in which jobs and economic growth have a zero-sum, relative gains quality to it. 

[So, what, Dan? Most Americans see the world through a mercantilist lens as well. Will this kind of rhetoric matter?--ed.] I'm honestly not sure. Here's the foreign economic policy component of the SOTU:

Even as we protect our people, we should remember that today’s world presents not only dangers, but opportunities. To boost American exports, support American jobs, and level the playing field in the growing markets of Asia, we intend to complete negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership. And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.

Now on the one hand, announcing the formal start of negotiations with the EU on a trade deal augurs well for my prediction last year about foreign economic policy playing a big role in Obama's second term. On the other hand, viewing trade through a mercantilist lens will make tough negotiations even tougher ... which means I might owe Phil Levy an expensive DC dinner.

In a speech in which traditional security threats seemed very much on the wane in terms of actual threat as well as political salience, it would be a cruel twist of fate to ratchet up ill-conceived foreign economic threats as a substitute. 

Developing...

Pop quiz:  which administration has been more enthusiastic about joining international treaties, George W. Bush or Barack Obama? 

The Obama administration has been slow to submit new treaties to the Senate, and only nine have been approved so far. In contrast, the George W. Bush administration secured Senate approval of 163 treaties over eight years. These included not only bilateral treaties but also multilateral agreements on many important subjects, including human rights, atmospheric and marine environmental protection, the laws of war and arms control.

That paragraph comes from John Bellinger III, Bush 43's former State Department legal adviser.  Now, one obvious pushback to this is that Obama has had to deal with a sovereigntist caucus in the Senate that is even more rabid than it was under Bush.  Bellinger acknowledges the obvious, but then goes on to argue that fault also lies with the Obama administration: 

 It isn’t enough to blame Republican opposition to international agreements, which certainly has risen among the party’s senators in recent years. That trend only makes it more important that President Obama work harder to gain Senate support for treaties in his second term....

President Obama must devote more energy to securing Senate approval for pending treaties, both by using the presidency’s bully pulpit to explain the benefits and by directing administration officials to pay more attention to the concerns of individual senators. Despite increasing Republican hostility toward treaties, the president should still be able to persuade between 12 and 15 pragmatic Republican senators to support treaties that give concrete rights to Americans and American businesses or that promote important American interests.

The president should begin with the Law of the Sea Convention, which enjoys strong support from all branches of the United States military and from the American business community. He almost certainly could have gained Senate approval of this important treaty during his first three years in office but inexplicably waited until the maelstrom of the 2012 election year to push for it.

Over at the Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten looks at the political science of this and concludes that Bellinger has a valid point.  The reason that Obama has been lethargic on treaties?  The opportunity cost of the effort: 

The idea that it is indeed hard work to pass treaties is supported by a recent working paper by Judith Kelley and Jon Pevehouse. Passing a treaty isn’t a simple matter of tallying the votes. The Senate’s agree and consent process takes away legislative time and political capital that could be used for other, perhaps more valuable, legislation. This opportunity cost theory yields some interesting and counterintuitive hypotheses. Presidents should become less likely to advance treaties when their approval ratings are high and when their party controls the Senate because that is the time when they can pass more valuable legislation on domestic issues. Kelley and Pevehouse find strong support for these patterns in their analysis with data from 1967-2008.

I suspect that Bellinger is correct that the Obama Administration could have persuaded a few Republicans to switch sides on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities if it had expended more time and capital on the treaty. This is not just about Republican opposition but also about priorities in the Obama Administration, which have, rightly or wrongly, been more on the domestic side.

One could argue that this logic also applies to Obama's cabinet selection process on foreign affairs.  With Susan Rice, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry, the White House strategy appears to be, "hey, let's float the name, see if anyone gets upset, and see if the nominee can push back effectively before bothering to actually nominate the person." 

Now from a pure logic of politics, this strategy makes some sense on some foreign policy matters.  As embarrassing as it was that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities did not get ratified by the Senate, it doesn't change much.  There is no effect on domestic law and the U.S. takes a marginal hit on the global stage.  Even on cabinet appointments, one could be truly bloodless and argue that Susan Rice's Value Over Replacement-Level Policy Principal wasn't that high.  The fiscal cliff negotiations matter a lot more. 

Still, politics is art as well as science, and there's something just a little bit chickens**t about the Obama White House's tactics.  Politics isn't only about winning -- sometimes it's just about making the effort.  And the truth of the matter is that when it comes to dealing with Congress, this administration hasn't made the effort.  By my recollection, during its entire first term, the only international relations piece of legislation that got the full court Obama White House press was the New START treaty with Russia.  Now given what was going on with the economy, one could argue that the administration had the right set of priorities.  But one way to help jumpstart the global economy would be a series of potentially significant foreign economic policy moves -- including the ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention, by the way.  And I'd feel safer about my bet with Phil Levy if I knew that the Obama administration was willing to get some skin in the game when it came to foreign policy and Congress. 

Letting peple like Susan Rice or Chuck Hagel twist in the political wind is, well, cruel.  So I hope that in its second term, the White House cares enough about foreign policy to actually engage Congress rather than throw up their hands and say, "crazy Republicans, what can you do?"  Actually, President Obama, you could do one whole hell of a lot if you made an effort. 

Earlier this week Shadow Government's Phil Levy threw some cold water on my pre-election optimism that foreign economic policy would take the lead in 2013, attributing it to my being  in Paris when I wrote it.  Phil has a lot more hands-on experience in these matters than I do, so it's worth reading his post in full.  To sum up here, however:

If, on a 10-point scale, the first term free trade challenges were a 'degree of difficulty' 2, then this term's challenges are an 8 or a 9.... it may be useful to distinguish between President Obama's political cost/benefit of negotiating a trade agreement and of concluding one....

Trade agreements take time. If the president is to get anything completed, he needs to start right away.

How to respond? Well, first, I have a confession -- I did have a lovely time in Paris. 

That said, now that I'm back in the austere bleakness that is November in New England, I'll stand by my prediction.  This is for a few reasons.  First, to push back on Phil a bit, I wouldn't characterize Obama's free trade challenges in the first term so easily.  As someone who was pretty critical of the president on trade matters, I would nevertheless acknowledge that he was facing gale-force winds on this topic during his first term.  In retrospect, if I had told Phil that the global economy would face the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and yet the United States would not resort to rank protectionism, I think he'd be moderately pleased.  Now, this wasn't entirely due to Obama, but still, I think he could have made things a lot worse... but didn't. 

To be fair, I think Phil's point was intended to be a bit narrower -- namely, that it was easy for Obama to push ratification of Budh-negotiated FTAs but hard to negotiate his own.  But surely, one of the reasons that Democrats were not particularly keen on those FTAs is because Bush negotiated them, yes?  If a Democratic president claims ownership of an FTA, I'd bet he's gonna get more party support in Congress.  Also, a side note: I'm dubious that traditional Democratic Party objections would block either the TPP or a Europe deal. 

Finally, in his post, Phil actually lays out the logic of why I think these deals will go forward:

The problem is that U.S. trading partners will not be infinitely patient in awaiting the conclusion of the deals under discussion. From a broader foreign policy perspective, the TPP is absolutely central to the administration's pivot to Asia. Europeans are eagerly backing the idea of an FTA as one of the few positive signals they might send to investors amidst the still-looming euro zone crisis. There will be serious foreign policy consequences if the president fools us thrice on support for trade.

Phil is right -- and it's precisely this reason that makes me think that Obama will make more forwrd progress on this in his second term.  For most of the postwar era, the United States could act as a veto player.  If it didn't get what it wanted in the GATT/WTO or some regional agreement, well, progress was halted.  One way the world has changed is that even if the United States calls a time-out, the rest of the world won't.  That kind of logic can compel even reluctant traders into agreeing to deals once they recognize that the status quo is even worse -- a logic that Lloyd Gruber spelled out in his excellent, underrated book Ruling the World. 

Now I'm not quite Nate Silver-like in my confidence about the next term, but I do hereby offer a challenge to Phil:  I'm willing to bet that at least two out of the following four things will happen during Obama's second term: 

1)  A Trans-Pacific Partnership that is ratified by Congress;

2)  Bilateral investment treaties with India and China;

3) A transatlantic integration agreement;

4)  A new services deal within the auspices of the WTO.

If Obama comes up short, I hereby offer to treat Phil to an expensive dinner at a DC restaurant of his choosing, because clearly Washington remains dysfunctional.  If I'm right, however, Phil has to buy me dinner in New York, that most globalized of American cities. 

Your humble blogger has not been shy in stating that he now votes in presidential elections based largely on foreign policy considerations.  Nor has he been shy in expressing his... er... exasperation with various foreign policy kerfuffles during the campaign.  So as Election Day approaches, you might wonder -- what will Daniel Drezner do?  [Oh, give me a f**ing break, just get on with it!!--ed.]

With Barack Obama, there's an actual record to judge.... and I think it would be best to call it mixed.  The Economist, in its Obama endorsement, noted the following:

[On] foreign policy... he was also left with a daunting inheritance. Mr Obama has refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste). After a shaky start with China, American diplomacy has made a necessary “pivot” towards Asia. By contrast, with both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered. Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons.

All these problems could have been anticipated. The Arab spring could not. Here Mr Obama can point to the ousting of tyrants in Egypt and Libya, but he has followed events rather than shaping them, nowhere more so than with the current carnage in Syria. Compared with, say, George Bush senior, who handled the end of the cold war, this aloof, disengaged man is no master diplomat; set beside the younger Bush, however, Mr Obama has been a safe pair of hands.

I think that's a decent assessment, although it overlooks what is, to me, the most troubling element of Barack Obama's first-term foreign policy legacy -- his management of the foreign policy process.  As my Foreign Policy colleague Rosa Brooks has written about in agonizing detail, the dysfunction that was talked about in Obama's first year in office hasn't disappeared along with Osama bin Laden. 

Indeed, the aftermath of Benghazi puts this on full display.  To be blunt, for all the GOP efforts to make the lack of pre-attack planning an indictment of the White House, consulate security in Benghazi is not the kind of decision that rises to the White House level.  The aftermath of the attack is another story, however.  In the past 24 hours alone, report after report after report after report shows Obama's foreign policy agencies defending their own turf, leaking to reporters in ways that heighten bureaucratic dysfunction, and revealing the White House's national security team to be vindictive and petty. 

Benghazi also highlights a deeper problem with this administration -- the lack of policy follow-through.  Whether one looks at the Iraq withdrawal or the rebalancing to Asia or the Afghanistan build-up or their embrace of the G-20, the story is the same.  Even if the administration had demonstrated good first instincts, it has failed to follow up those instincts with either next steps or contingency planning. 

So, the biggest indictment of the Obama administraion's foreign policy has been poor management.  Which, as it turns out, is Mitt Romney's genuine strength, as Ezra Klein points out in his excellent Bloomberg column this AM: 

Romney’s apparent disinterest in an animating ideology has made him hard to pin down -- for the Journal editorial board, for journalists, for Democrats and Republicans, for campaign consultants, even for Romney’s closest confidantes. It has led to the common knock on Romney that he lacks a core. He’s an opportunist. He picks whatever position is expedient. He is a guy with brains, but no guts.

But after spending the last year talking to Romney advisers and former colleagues, as well as listening to him on the campaign trail, I’ve come to see this description as insufficient. It’s not so much that Romney lacks a core as that his core can’t readily be mapped by traditional political instruments. As a result, he is free to be opportunistic about the kinds of commitments that people with strong political cores tend to value most.

What Romney values most is something most of us don’t think much about: management. A lifetime of data has proven to him that he’s extraordinarily, even uniquely, good at managing and leading organizations, projects and people. It’s those skills, rather than specific policy ideas, that he sees as his unique contribution. That has been the case everywhere else he has worked, and he assumes it will be the case in the White House, too. 

This jibes with all the chatter I hear about Romney as well.  Which should lead you to think that Romney might be exactly what ails American foreign policy. 

The thing is, Romney's own foreign policy rhetoric makes it clear that managing foreign policy isn't enough.  As he's said, the president has to be a foreign policy leader.  A president has much greater leeway on these issues than on other policy dimensions.  A good foreign policy president needs to be genunely interested in the subject, possess good foreign policy insincts, and rely on a core set of ideas that allows him or her to make tough decisions in a world of uncertainty.  As I wrote last year: 

[A] philosophy of "I won't say anything until I know all the facts" is bogus because, in foreign policy, the facts are never all in. Very often intelligence is partial, biased, or simply flat-out wrong. It's those moments, when a president has to be a foreign policy decider for a 51-49 decision, that a combination of background knowledge and genuine interest in the topic might be useful.

When I use these criteria to think about Mitt Romney, he doesn't do very well.  Every conversation with every Romney advisor confirms the same thing:  this is not a guy who has engaged deeply in international affairs.  He was perfectly happy to go all neocon-y in the primary season to appeal to his base, and then tack back to the center in the general election to appeal to war-weary independents.  He's not doing this because he's dishonest; he's doing this because he doesn't care.  His choice of foreign policy neophyte Paul Ryan as his VP pick confirms this as well:  Romney/Ryan has the least foreign policy experience of any GOP ticket in at least sixty years.  

Furthermore, in the moments during this campaign when Romney has been required to display his foreign policy instincts, he's foundered badly.  He stuck his beak into the Chen Guangcheng case when silence was the better option.  He did the same thing in the aftermath of the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi, going so far as to accuse Obama of "sympathizing" with terrorists.  As for his overseas trip, well, the less said, the better.  All of these episodes show a guy who's out of his depth on matters of foreign affairs.  And when he's been criticized in taking these stances, Romney has responded by doubling down on a bad position.  His political instincts have led him to some bad foreign policy choices. 

I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about as Obama as, say, Jonathan Chait, but his endorsement of the president makes an interesting point:

It is noteworthy that... the best decisions that Obama made during his presidency ran against the advice of much of his own administration.... Many of his own advisers, both economists steeped in free-market models and advisers anxious about a bailout-weary public, argued against his decision to extend credit to, and restructure, the auto industry. On Libya, Obama’s staff presented him with options either to posture ineffectually or do nothing; he alone forced them to draw up an option that would prevent a massacre. And Obama overruled some cautious advisers and decided to kill Osama bin Laden.

On foreign policy, Barack Obama might be an indifferent manager, but by making his first decision the right one, he has saved himself numerous embarrassments and reversals. 

This was a closer call than I expected, and I honestly hope (and think there's a good chance) that if Mitt Romney is elected, he'd grow into his foreign policy role with time.  For this analyst, however, Barack Obama is the imperfect, but superior, alternative. 

And now the bitter political invective in the comments.... begin!! 

Your humble blogg -- [Wait, screw that, you should be feeling pretty proud today!! -- ed.] 

Your proud blogger will be watching tonight's foreign policy debate despite his near-certainty that it's not going to be all that illuminating or informative. He has no choice, as he has a prior commitment to watch the damn thing. 

Now, in preparation for the debate, I could encourage you to read some excellent preparatory posts by Walter Russell Mead or Spencer Ackerman, or this essay on American incolvency in grand strategy by Michael Mazarr -- but that's no fun. 

I could suggest following one of the foreign policy debate drinking games out there -- see the National Journal or Duck of Minerva, for example -- but these drinking games look exceptionally dangerous. Drink when Obama mentions bin Laden? Really? Or when Romney says "resolve"? No one would be upright after the first twenty minutes. 

No, I think the only responsible thing to do is to suggest my own debate drinking game. The idea here is to sort the possible answer such that a true "black swan" event would have to occur for the participant to risk alcohol poisoning. 

So, in that spirit: 

THE OFFICIAL 2012 FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE DRINKING GAME

Take a sip of your drink if....

1. Either candidate makes a geographical mistake (like insisting that the West Bank borders Syria or something like that). 

2. Obama says "I'm the commander in chief." 

3. Romney says that the U.S. Navy is the smallest it's been since 1916 (a dubious claim).

4. Romney accuses Obama of turning the United States into Greece.

5. Anyone on the stage (including Bob Schieffer) mentions Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

Finish your drink if....

1. Either candidate mentions the benefits of trade with China.

2. Either candidate says that Latin America is a crucial strategic region for the United States.

3. Obama says that there's some wiggle room in the 2014 withdrawal date for U.S. combat forces for Afghanistan.

4. Romney says that that there's no wiggle room in the 2014 withdrawal date for U.S. combat forces for Afghanistan.

5. Anyone onstage acknowledges that China has pretty much stopped intervening to keep its currency undervalued. 

Finish your bottle if....

1. Romney says anything positive about the United Nations.

2. Either candidate says that the United States needs to push hard for democratization in Saudi Arabia. 

3. Either "Africa" or "Doha round" are mentioned.

4. Either candidate blasts Israel for keeping its currency severely undervalued. 

5. Obama accuses Romney of a "speak loudly and carry a magic wand" doctrine. 

DRINK YOURSELF TO OBLIVION IF AND ONLY IF....

1. Bob Schieffer asks the candidates what they would do in case of zombies. 

Now I'm pretty sure that if you follow these rules, you'll enjoy tonight's debate without regretting that enjoyment tomorrow. 

I've had my fair share of disagreements with Danielle Pletka in the past, but I liked her well-crafted New York Times op-ed on what Romney needs to say today on foreign policy a great deal.  In particular: 

For an American public fixated on the economy, another Romney valedictory on the advantages of not being Barack Obama will be a waste of time. Americans feel more comfortable when they have a sense of the candidate’s vision, because it gives them a clearer road map for the future....

Criticisms of Mr. Obama’s national security policies have degenerated into a set of clichés about apologies, Israel, Iran and military spending. To be sure, there is more than a germ of truth in many of these accusations. But these are complaints, not alternatives. Worse yet, they betray the same robotic antipathy that animated Bush-haters. “I will not apologize for America” is no more a clarion call than “let’s nation-build at home.”

Mr. Romney must put flesh on the bones of his calls for a renewed American greatness. With a vision for American power, strategically and judiciously applied, we can continue to do great things with fewer resources. The nation’s greatest strength is not its military power or fantastic productivity. It’s the American commitment to our founding principles of political and economic freedom. If Mr. Romney can outline to voters how he will use American power to advance those principles, he will go a long way in persuading them he deserves the job of commander in chief.

This gets to the nub of Mitt Romney's foreign policy problem.  If one pushes past the overheated rhetoric, then you discover that Romney wants a lot of the same ends as Barack Obama -- a stable, peaceful and free Middle East, for example.  But that's not shocking -- any major party president will want the same ends.  The differenes are in the means through which a president will achieve those ends.  And -- in op-ed after op-ed, in speech after speech -- Romney either elides the means altogether, mentions means that the Obama administration is already using, or just says the word "resolve" a lot.  That's insufficient. 

Unfortunately, the pre-speech indicators suggest that Team Romney is ignoring Pletka's advice.  Ineeed, if CNN's excerpts of Romney's big foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute today are any indication, there's almost no new policy content in this speech. 

I'll check back in after the speech, but David Sanger's NYT front-pager today about how the Romney team is managing the foreign policy side of things is pretty dispiriting: 

[W]hile the theme Mr. Romney plans to hit the hardest in his speech at V.M.I. — that the Obama era has been one marked by “weakness” and the abandonment of allies — has political appeal, the specific descriptions of what Mr. Romney would do, on issues like drawing red lines for Iran’s nuclear program and threatening to cut off military aid to difficult allies like Pakistan or Egypt if they veer away from American interests, sound at times quite close to Mr. Obama’s approach....

And the speech appears to glide past positions Mr. Romney himself took more than a year ago, when he voiced opposition to expanding the intervention in Libya to hunt down Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with what he termed insufficient resources. He called it “mission creep and mission muddle,” though within months Mr. Qaddafi was gone. And last spring, Mr. Romney was caught on tape telling donors he believed there was “just no way” a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could work.

Mr. Romney’s Monday speech calls vaguely for support of Libya’s “efforts to forge a lasting government” and to pursue the “terrorists who attacked our consulate in Benghazi and killed Americans.” And he said he would “recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security” with Israel. But he does not say what resources he would devote to those tasks.

The shifts, a half dozen of Mr. Romney’s advisers said in interviews, partly reflect the fact that the candidate himself has not deeply engaged in these issues for most of the campaign, certainly not with the enthusiasm, and instincts, he has on domestic economic issues. But they also represent continuing divisions.

Two of Mr. Romney’s advisers said he did not seem to have the strong instincts that he has on economic issues; he resonates best, one said, to the concept of “projecting strength” and “restoring global economic growth.” But he has appeared unconcerned about the widely differing views within his own campaign about whether spreading American-style freedoms in the Middle East or simply managing, and limiting, the rise of Islamist governments should be a major goal.

Simply put, if Mitt Romney can't demonstrate leadership and resolve in commanding the foreign policy camps that are participating in his campaign, I'm somewhat dubious that he can do the same with either Russia or China. 

Am I missing anything? 

Another day, another bad foreign policy headline for Barack Obama: 

With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal.

This comes on the heels of the kerfuffle over the administration's public explanations for the Benghazi consulate attack.  When Jon Stewart starts to lampoon the administration on the issue, it's definitely a body blow for the Democrats.  

In the wake of these bad news ripples, the Romney camp has clearly decided to push forward on the foreign policy criticisms.  Will it work? 

Now, I'm on record as being very skeptical about this gambit -- but I could easily be wrong.  As Dave Weigel shrewdly observed a week or so ago, the foreign policy polling showed that Obama's star had dimmed on this issue compared to six months ago.  Having embassies and consulates attacked will do that.  Indeed, for the first time in this election cycle, a poll came out showing that voters believe Romney would be tougher on terrorism than Obama. 

So was I wrong?  Not really.  On the one hand, I'm actually glad that the president's foreign policy numbers are going down.  This means that votrers are actually, you know, paying attention to foreign policy.  I'm on record as wanting that to happen.   And Obama's numbers should go down when bad things seem to be happening to the United States in the world.  The combination of the ongoing loss of life in Syria, the embassy attacks, and bad Afghan strategy highlights the fact that killing Osama bin Laden is not a grand strategy. 

But there are two counterpoints to this, one on politics and one on policy.  On the politics, it's worth noting that Romney pivoted to foreign policy at a time when his poll numbers have pivoted in a southward direction.  So even if Romney is doing comparatively better on terrorism issues, it's not an issue that voters care all that much about. 

Second, I suspect that the narrowing of the gap between Romney and Obama is temporary.  The reason goes back to this parable: 

Two campers are in the woods. In the morning, as they exit their tent, they see a bear rumbling into their campsite. One of the campers immediately starts putting on his shoes. The other camper turns to him and says, "Are you crazy? Even with your shoes, there's no way you can outrun that bear."

The first camper stands up with his shoes now on and says, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you."

If voters make their choice on foreign policy as if it was a referendum on the Obama adminisration, then recvent events would represent a problem for them.  But as with domestic policy, I suspect that they do a compare-and-contrast.  And here Romney has some issues.  He badly botched his initial response to the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi.  Politico's story on his campaign wanting to go back to Libya suggests a lack of consensus on exactly how to attack the administration. 

This lack of consensus shows up in Romney's latest foreign policy op-ed, which ran in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.  There's an extended critique of the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East.  That's fine if this was a referendum -- but if it's a choice, then what would Romney do differently?  The relevant paragraphs:

In this period of uncertainty, we need to apply a coherent strategy of supporting our partners in the Middle East—that is, both governments and individuals who share our values.

This means restoring our credibility with Iran. When we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability—and the regional instability that comes with it—is unacceptable, the ayatollahs must be made to believe us.

It means placing no daylight between the United States and Israel. And it means using the full spectrum of our soft power to encourage liberty and opportunity for those who have for too long known only corruption and oppression. The dignity of work and the ability to steer the course of their lives are the best alternatives to extremism.

But this Middle East policy will be undermined unless we restore the three sinews of our influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values. That will require a very different set of policies from those President Obama is pursuing.

You know what's funny about Romney's proposed foreign policy?  It's exactly the same as what the Obama administration is doing right now.   Clearly the administration is trying to use its economic power to win some friends in Egypt and hurt some enemies in Iran, for example.  Hell, even Jennifer Rubin labelled the op-ed as "boring pablum."  Romney doesn't offer a different strategy -- hell, he doesn't really offer up any strategy at all in the op-ed, just a lot of boilerplate rhetoric. 

Now boilerplate rhetoric might have actually been enough in previous elections, when the GOP had a brand of foreign policy competency.  Romney could simply articulate the message that, "Barack Obama and I both want to advance our interests in the world.  He's bungled his chance -- I won't."  But not enough voters are going to buy that sales pitch, not after Iraq.  And since Romney can't hit Obama as being too hawkish, his only choice is going to be to try to out-hawk Obama.  And the American people ain't in the mood for that either. 

Barack Obama's foreign policy record is full of blemishes, but it doesn't contain the one thing that would give Mitt Romney an edge on this issue -- a truly catastrophic decision that cost ample amounts of blood and treasure.  Without that, Romney would have to be note-perfect on foreign affairs to gain an edge -- and he's been anything but.

When we last left off, your humble blogger was speculating on the ways in which foreign policy had cost Mitt Romney during the campaign.  In this post I want to expand on that theme -- with an assist from the just-released-this-very-minute-from-embargo 2012 Chicago Council Survey of American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy. 

To set the table: 

1)  Despite the expectations of some Republicans, the traditional economic variables that affect a presidential campaign aren't tilting the needle towards Mitt Romney.  As the New York Times' Jeff Sommer reports:

For a year in which a truly dismal economy sealed the electoral fate of an incumbent president, [Ray Fair] says, look at 1980, when President Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. In the nine months leading up to that election, per capita gross domestic product actually declined at an average annual rate of 3.7 percent, while inflation increased at an annual rate of 7.9 percent.

Professor Fair estimates that the comparable numbers for President Obama are G.D.P. growth of 1.62 percent and inflation of 1.51 percent. The low inflation rate is a plus for the president, while the mediocre G.D.P. growth rate is a problem — though not a fatal one.

“You can quite properly call this economy ‘weak,’ ” he said, “but it’s nothing like what Carter faced.” Mr. Reagan’s overwhelming victory “fit the economic picture perfectly,” he said. “This is a different situation.”

He added: “If the economy were significantly weaker or significantly stronger — if we were in a recession or if economic growth were really dramatically better — we’d have a much clearer picture of who would win the election. But the economy remains in a range of mediocre growth. It puts us in the margin-of-error range.”....

Professor Fair will compute a fresh prediction based on data available in late October, but at this stage the political probabilities aren’t likely to shift very much, he says. “It looks as though this will be a horse race, a very close one,” he says.

If it's a horse race, then one of the horses has pulled into an ever-so-slight lead. Both FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver and Politico's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen note that the conventions have given a small but crucial advantage to the incumbent.  VandeHei and Allen talked to both campaigns, and here is the best hope for the Romney camp:   

[W]hen you dig into the small slice of undecided voters (probably only 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate, according to the campaigns), the demographics are not favorable to Obama: mostly white, many with some college education, economically stressed, largely middle-aged. 

Obama officials have maintained for several weeks that there are too few undecided voters for Romney to get the bounce he needs from the debates. “Romney is not going to win undecided voters 4-to-1,” a senior administration official told reporters on Air Force One on Friday. “If you are losing in Ohio by 4 or 5 points and trailing in Colorado by 2 points, if you are trailing in Nevada by 2 or 3 points, you are not going to win in those states." 

So, for Romney to win, he's going to have to run the table with the tiny sliver of undecided independents. 

And here is where foreign policy becomes a real problem for Mitt Romney -- because if the Chicago Council results are accurate, independents basically want the exact opposite of what Mitt Romney is selling them. 

Let's stipulate that a President Romney might not actually do what he's promising during the campaign -- certainly the smart money doesn't believe him.  Still, based on his rhetoric to date, let's also stipulate that Romney really wants America to lead the world.  He wants to boost defense spending rather than cut it.  He certainly wants to give the appearance that he would pursue a more hawkish policy towards Iran, Syria, Russia, North Korea, China and illegal immigrants than Barack Obama.    

That's great -- except it turns out most of America -- and independents in particular -- want pretty much the opposite of that.  Indeed, as Marshall Bouton says in the Foreword to the report: 

Over time, Independents have become more inclined than either Republicans or Democrats to limit U.S. engagement in world affairs. Because Independents are an increasing share of the electorate, this development in American public opinion warrants attention. 

If you read the whole report, what's striking is how much the majority view on foreign policy jibes with what the Obama administration has been doing in the world: military retrenchment from the Greater Middle East, a reliance on diplomacy and sanctions to deal with rogue states, a refocusing on East Asia, and prudent cuts in defense spending. 

As for Romney, here are some excerpts from the report that suggest where the entire country -- and independents in particular -- are drifting away from his foreign policy rhetoric: 

This survey demonstrates a  strong desire to move on from a decade of war, to scale back spending, and avoid major new military entanglements. The lesson many Americans took away from the Iraq war—that nations should be more cautious about using military force to deal with rogue nations—appears to be taking hold more broadly (p. 13)....

Along with the lessons learned from a decade of war and a reduced sense of threat, Americans are also keenly aware of constraints on U.S. economic resources. When asked whether the defense budget should be cut along with other programs in the effort to address the federal budget deficit, 68 percent of Americans say the defense budget should be cut. This is up 10 points from 58 percent in 2010 (p. 15)....

The most preferred approach to ending [the Iranian nuclear] threat, endorsed by 80 percent, is the one that the UN Security Council is pursuing: imposing tighter economic sanctions on Iran. Essentially the same number (79%) approve of continuing diplomatic efforts to get Iran to stop enriching uranium. Consistent with this strong support for diplomatic approaches, in a separate question, 67 percent of Americans say the United States should be willing to meet and talk with Iranian leaders (p. 29)....

Republicans see greater threats in nearly all areas tested in the 2012 survey. They are more likely than Democrats and Independents to view U.S. debt to China, immigration, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iran’s nuclear program as critical threats (p. 42).

It would appear that Americans -- particularly independents -- have become even more realpolitik than they were when I wrote this five years ago.  Or, to put it more pungently, poll results like these are the kind of thing that will make John Bolton really angry and Jennifer Rubin really scared and William Kristol and the rest of the Weekly Standard gang all hot and bothered -- and not in the good way. 

Now, I strongly suspect that this won't matter to most undecideds.  Foreign policy really isn't a high priority for most voters.  That said, there are three ways in which this could matter. 

First, undecideds likely hold that position because they haven't paid a lot of attention to the campaign yet.  As they start to, it's going to be easier for them to process the rhetorical differences on Iran than on health care.  So if Romney is going to attract the bulk of these undecideds, he's going to do it despite his foreign policy pronouncements -- not because of them.   In an election where a 2% advantage seems insurmountable in a lot of states, even tiny disadvantages matter. 

Second, the Obama campaign seems to be quite eager to micro-target key audiences on foreign policy/national security, as VandeHei and Allen note in their story:

Obama’s plan is to slice and dice his way through myriad campaigns, all distinct, all designed to turn on — or off — very specific subsets of voters in specific states or even counties. Republicans concede Obama is better organized in the areas getting hit with the micro-campaigns....

The Obama plan also focuses on students with an education message; veterans in states that include Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada; housing in Nevada and Florida, where the market tanked; and military families in Virginia, Florida and Colorado (emphasis added). 

I am willing to bet that these groups are not going to be keen to hear anything about a more bellicose foreign policy, and Romney's waning competency on the issue won't help. 

Third -- and finally -- look at it this way:  if the economy doesn't produce the national poll movements that the Romney campaign wants, they'll have to shift to secondary issues.  For the last forty years, the GOP has been able to go to foreign policy and national security.  If Romney does that this time, however, he'll alienate the very independents he needs to win. 

Could Romney/Ryan simply retool their foreign policy message for the general election to allay the concerns of independents and undecideds?  No, I don't think they can.  For one thing, it's simply too late to rebrand.  For another, when cornered on these questions they seem to like doubling down on past statements. Finally, I get the sense that one reason Romney sounds so hawkish is because the campaign thinks it's a cheap way to appeal to the GOP base.  Deviating from that script to woo the undecideds will only fuel suspicion of Romney's conservative bona fides. 

So maybe, just maybe, foreign policy will matter a little bit during this election.  And not in a way that helps Mitt Romney. 

Am I missing anything? 

Your humble blogger has fiercely resisted getting drawn into the scrum regarding Niall Ferguson's Newsweek jeremiad against Barack Obama.  I kinda already said my piece about Ferguson as a polemicist more than a year ago. The fact-check critical blowback and Ferguson's response and the response to Ferguson's response have been truly nasty.  And I'm supposed to be on vacation.  There are beaches very close to where I am typing this.  The Official Blog Wife will be unhappy -- and you do not want to see the Official Blog Wife unhappy on vacation. 

At the moment, however, I find myself alone next to a computer.  And I have noticed that most of the commentary has been directed at Ferguson's discussion of the U.S. economy.  The foreign policy section of the essay has been comparatively neglected (though see here), and I was curious to see how it held up to a fact-check.  So -- quickly, before the Official Blog Family returns from the beach -- let's dive in!  

The failures of leadership on economic and fiscal policy over the past four years have had geopolitical consequences. The World Bank expects the U.S. to grow by just 2 percent in 2012. China will grow four times faster than that; India three times faster. By 2017, the International Monetary Fund predicts, the GDP of China will overtake that of the United States.

David Frum has already pointed out -- in a defense of Ferguson, mind you -- the ways in which Ferguson's calculatons of the Chinese economy are... er... geopolitically a bit off.  By using purchasing power parity rather than market exchange rates, Ferguson is magnifying China's economic power just a wee bit.  Or as Frum puts it, "things are not yet quite so dire as Ferguson fears."

Onward!

Meanwhile, the fiscal train wreck has already initiated a process of steep cuts in the defense budget, at a time when it is very far from clear that the world has become a safer place—least of all in the Middle East.

You know, it's a funny coincidence, cause I was just perusing the Institute for Economics and Peace's 2012 Global Peace Index, which measures "the extent to which countries are involved
in ongoing domestic and international conflicts."  A key conclusion they draw in the 2012 report?  "The average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007 (p. 37)."  So, actually, it is somewhat clear that the world -- and the United States -- remains comparatively safe and secure.  

Next!

For me the president’s greatest failure has been not to think through the implications of these challenges to American power. Far from developing a coherent strategy, he believed—perhaps encouraged by the premature award of the Nobel Peace Prize—that all he needed to do was to make touchy-feely speeches around the world explaining to foreigners that he was not George W. Bush.

I discussed whether the Obama administration had a grand strategy at length in Foreign Affairs last year.  I think Ferguson has half a point here on the "touchy-feely speeches" Obama delivered in his first year -- but his administration has clearly pivoted (get it?) away from that first-year approach

In Tokyo in November 2009, the president gave his boilerplate hug-a-foreigner speech: “In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another ... The United States does not seek to contain China ... On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.” Yet by fall 2011, this approach had been jettisoned in favor of a “pivot” back to the Pacific, including risible deployments of troops to Australia and Singapore. From the vantage point of Beijing, neither approach had credibility.

What evidence is there that the rebalancing strategy hasn't worked and lacks credibility?  The initial response to the pivot was pretty positive, and it's safe to say that China noticed it.  I'm not saying that no evidence exists, mind you.  I'm saying that sheer assertion by Ferguson does not in and of itself constiute evidence. 

Believing it was his role to repudiate neoconservatism, Obama completely missed the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy—precisely the wave the neocons had hoped to trigger with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When revolution broke out—first in Iran, then in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria—the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to catch the wave by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail.

In the case of Iran he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations.  Ditto Syria. In Libya he was cajoled into intervening. In Egypt he tried to have it both ways, exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, then drawing back and recommending an “orderly transition.” The result was a foreign-policy debacle. Not only were Egypt’s elites appalled by what seemed to them a betrayal, but the victors—the Muslim Brotherhood—had nothing to be grateful for. America’s closest Middle Eastern allies—Israel and the Saudis—looked on in amazement.

"This is what happens when you get caught by surprise," an anonymous American official told the New York Times in February 2011. “We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt moves from stability to turmoil? None.” 

Man, there's a lot to unpack here.  First, I'm calling bulls**t on the Iran claim.  Note to Niall:  it's never a good idea to use a Jennifer Rubin talking point.  Second, I'm pretty sure the administration has been active in Syria -- just not as active as Ferguson would like.  Third, it's waaaaay too soon and simplistic describe Egypt as a "foreign-policy debacle."

Regarding the strategic surprise, Ferguson is telling the truth but not the whole truth.  Sure, Obama was caught unawares.  So was everyone else.  I talked to a lot of high-ranking Israeli leaders/thinkers when I visited the country less than six months before the Arab Spring, and not a single person we talked to even hinted at any kind of pan-Arab uprising.  Ferguson attends Herzliya regularly, so I'm curious whether he knows any Israelis who picked up on this. 

My point here is that Israel has a powerful incentive to monitor everything going on in the Arab world -- and they didn't pick up on the Arab Spring.  Does Ferguson seriously believbe a President McCain would have detected it? 

Remarkably the president polls relatively strongly on national security. Yet the public mistakes his administration’s astonishingly uninhibited use of political assassination for a coherent strategy. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, the civilian proportion of drone casualties was 16 percent last year. Ask yourself how the liberal media would have behaved if George W. Bush had used drones this way. Yet somehow it is only ever Republican secretaries of state who are accused of committing “war crimes.”

The real crime is that the assassination program destroys potentially crucial intelligence (as well as antagonizing locals) every time a drone strikes. It symbolizes the administration’s decision to abandon counterinsurgency in favor of a narrow counterterrorism. What that means in practice is the abandonment not only of Iraq but soon of Afghanistan too. Understandably, the men and women who have served there wonder what exactly their sacrifice was for, if any notion that we are nation building has been quietly dumped. Only when both countries sink back into civil war will we realize the real price of Obama’s foreign policy.

Ferguson makes some interesting points here, but can we talk about the elephant in the room?  Why does Ferguson think Obama polls well on national security?  Killing bin Laden, the Libya war, the rebalancing strategy, and the withdrawal from Iraq are commonly cited.  Guess which one on that list Ferguson fails to mention. 

As for what veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq think, well, Pew polled vets on this very question in the fall of 2011.  The results?  "While post-9/11 veterans are more supportive than the general public, just one-third (34%) say that, given the costs and benefits to the U.S., the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have both been worth fighting."  Nevertheless, 96% of them felt proud of their military service.  So I'm guessing that they want the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan too. 

[UPDATE:  Damn Pew's deceptive topline results!  Looking a bit deeper, I see support for the war in Afghanistan still commands 50% support among post-9/11 veterans.  On the other hand, these post-9/11 veterans also overwhelmingly (87%) support the increased use of unmanned drones that Ferguson dislikes so much.] 

America under this president is a superpower in retreat, if not retirement. Small wonder 46 percent of Americans—and 63 percent of Chinese—believe that China already has replaced the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower or eventually will.

I like using survey data to bolster my arguments just as much as the next guy -- but I'm also willing to say quite clearly when the public is wrong about something -- and they're wrong about this.  Furthermore, Ferguson knows this perception is wrong.  We know from the previous paragraph that he doesn't care for public attitudes when he disagrees with them, but he uses it here.  The reason?  This time it supports his argument. 

My verdict:  the foreign policy section isn't as bad as the domestic policy section of Ferguson's article, but it's still sloppy.  Ferguson makes a lot of lazy assertions without backing them up with facts.  Some of the facts he uses are a bad fit for the arguments he's trying to make.  And he values similar data points differently depending on whether they support his argument or not. 

There are some good critiques that can be made of the Obama administration's foreign policy, and Ferguson skirts close to some of them.  But Romney supporters can do better. 

The news that Mitt Romney is planning a overseas trip/foreign policy address has led to some... interesting reactions among libertarians/realists.  Even before the trip was announced, Daniel Larison thought it was a bad idea for Romney to focus on foreign policy at all.  After the trip was trial-ballooned, Larison still thought it was a bad idea -- as did Justin Logan at the Cato Institute (guest-posting on Steve Walt's blog). 

As someone who thought this wasn't the worst notion in the world, it's worth reviewing their objections.  In toto:

1)  Romney's neoconservative-friendly foreign policy views are unpopular in both the United States and many of the countries on Romney's itinerary -- so there's no upside.  As Larison puts it:  "Romney’s hawkish critics haven’t fully grasped that foreign policy has become a weakness for the GOP over the last six years, so it makes no sense to them that it might help their presidential candidate to avoid talking about it."

2)  This is an election about the economy, and any energy Romney devotes to foreign policy is wasted.  As Logan notes, "Sometimes foreign-policy wonks have trouble divorcing what they are interested in from what voters are interested in.... Unless I'm missing something big here, every minute Romney spends overseas is a minute he's spending away from winning the election."

3)  Even if (1) and (2) do not apply, there is very little political upside to be gained from visiting other countries.  Larison goes through the various possible upsides for a challenger to go abroad, but doesn't find them terribly convincing. 

So, how to respond?  First, let's parse this out into two questions.  First, should candidates talk more about foreign policy because it's good for democracy?  Second, is it in their own political interests to talk more/visit other countries? 

I hope Larison and Logan would agree that, political imperatives aside, it would be A Good Thing for the Country if presidential candidates talked more about foreign policy.  Presidents have much more leeway in conducting foreign policy than domestic policy.  They wind up spending about half their time and energy as president on foreign policy.  Given its importance to the office, the fact that it's not talked about all that much during the campaign is kinda problematic.  It might be worthwhile for major party candidates to openly discuss/think about their foreign policy views just a bit.

Now, on whether it's politically savvy for presidential candidates to talk about this stuff, I largely agree with Logan and Larison.  Voters don't care about foreign policy.  In Romney's case, however, there are a few reasons why a summer foreign policy trip makes some sense. 

First, er, it's the summer.  Logan is correct that foreign policy wonks tend to confuse what interests them with what interests the public, but so do campaign advisors.  The undecideds aren't dwelling on politics at the moment, and likely won't do so until after the Summer Olympics are over.  All these peple will do is process the occasional headline.  If Romney has to choose between this headline and ones about foreign policy, he might prefer the latter. 

Second, at least one of his foreign policy trips will play well domestically.  Larison and Logan grumble about it, but they both appear to acknowledge that the Israel leg of the trip would likely fire up the evangelical base and peel off disaffected Jews from Obama's coalition.  If he's going all the way to Israel, then a few more days/stops make some sense.

Third, and finally, Romney dug his own grave on this issue.  In op-ed after op-ed, Romney has relied on blowhard rhetoric and a near-total absence of detail to make his case.  In doing so, Romney is the one who has sowed the doubts about his foreign policy gravitas in the first place.  If his campaign manages to produce a successful foreign policy speech/road trip, he can dial down one source of base criticism -- and focus again on the economy in the fall.  And eliminating base citicism matters domestically -- the media tends to magnify within-party critiques as being more newsworthy. 

The best criticism is Larison's contention that the actual content of Romney's foreign policy vision might not go down so well with the American people.  This might be true, but it might not be.  The thing is, no one is entirely sure what Romney thinks about foreign policy.  Maybe his op-eds were nothing but rhetorical bluster -- as campaign musings about foreign policy tend to be.  It's also possible/likely that whatever foreign policy speeches he delivers in the next month or so wouldn't match his actions once in office.  As I noted last year, however, there is value in having a presidential candidate demonstrate "generic foreign policy knowledge." 

I suspect both Larison and Logan would prefer a foreign policy in which the United States doesn't aim to do as much abroad, allowing the country to retrench and revitalize the domestic economy.  That's a compelling argument (and, actually, one that President Obama made in his first few years of office).  Just because Romney might disagree with that approach, however, is no reason for him to clam up on foreign affairs this summer.  As a democracy, we're entitled to hear about how he thinks about these issues.  Politically, a well-executed foreign policy trip won't net him a lot of votes, but it would cauterize a festering politcal wound and allow him to pivot back to the economy. 

Dear Governor Romney,

Congratulations on securing the GOP nomination and earning a roughly 50/50 shot at becoming president in January 2013.  It was an ugly primary fight, but you're passed it and have been consolidating your right flank.  Politically speaking, nicely done. 

Now, I know you want this campaign to be about the economy, the economy, and the economy, but can we talk about foreign policy for just a little bit?  Because if you don't talk about international relations, your advisors are gonna continue to bitch and moan to the press, like they did this week to Rich Oppel at the New York Times and Eli Lake at Daily Beast.  

This will be an ongoing problem for you, because an emerging meme is that your campaign has remarkably little policy content.  Your campaign didn't handle immigration terribly well, for example. Indeed, on foreign policy, you've actually been a bit more forthcoming than on other policy dimensions.  The thing is, what you've said in recent months has prompted... er... well... either mockery or derision.  No one knows whether you're the second coming of neoconservatism or a more realpolitik foreign policy leader.  This lack of certainty is making a lot of people itchy. 

One of your consistent themes has been to bash President Obama because "his positions in foreign policy have not communicated American strength and resolve."  The thing is, if you can't even control your own foreign policy advisors from blabbing to anyone and everyone who writes about foreign policy, well, then you're not really communicating strength and resolve either, are you? 

We agree that this election should primarily be about the economy.  But I suspect we also agree that voters need to be comfortable with a presidential candidate as a commander-in-chief and a foreign policy leader.  After four years, President Obama has carved out a record that is not without blemishes but is pretty clearly above the bar in terms of foreign policy competence.  The burden is on you to demonstrate that you can be above the bar as well.  So far, all you've demonstrated is that you might be better at foreign policy than Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, or Rick Perry, which is a really low bar.   

President Obama has made a hash of his policy towards Israel and Palestine.  Relations with Pakistan, Russia, India and Canada have cooled off considerably since the Bush years.  America's relationship with Latin America and Africa seems uncertain at best.  Cybersecurity remains an inchoate mess. On foreign economic policy, it's not clear at all that Obama can get the G-20 to agree on anything and the Doha trade round is dead, dead, dead.  There's clearly room for improvement, and American foreign policy benefits from a vigorous marketplace of ideas.  So show some leadership, get your team in line, and articulate a foreign policy vision that goes beyond the vague nostrums of "An American Century." 

Seriously, get it together.

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Drezner

So it turned out that this was the week that both the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign decided that foreign policy was an important thing to talk about during election season.  Speaking personally, this is great!! I seem to have moved up in the Rolodex of those covering the campaign.  Expect lots of juicy quotes in the months to come, and readers are warmly encouraged to proffer useful metaphors that I can provide in soundbite fashion  over the next six months.

Unfortunately for the Romney campaign, this was not a great week to ramp up attacks along this line.  The reasons is that, all told, the Obama administration had a pretty good foreign policy week.  Not all, or even most of this, was of its own doing, but consider the following: 

1)  Iran has signaled a genuine willingness to talk compromise on its nuclear program in order to avoid the EU oil embargo kicking in.  That might just be rhetoric, but it's interesting to note that even senior Israeli officials are starting to talk down the Iranian threat.  The less Iran becomes a thing, the lower gas prices can fall better for the administration. 

2)  The United States has maybe, just maybe, eliminated a major thorn in bilateral relations with Japan by finally reaching agreement on moving U.S. troops from Okinawa.  We'll see if this holds -- everyone assumed that a 2006 agreement had put this problem to rest before successive Japanese governments shot themselves in the foot raised it again,  but this is the thing on this list for which the administration deserves the most credit.  As an added bonus, the administration  actually got some nice words from John McCain on comity with the Senate.

3)  For some reason China seems to be in a more productive mood in their dealings with the United States, and Mark Landsler and Steven Lee Myers have taken notice in the New York Times: 

For years, China  stymied efforts to pressure Iran. Now, in addition to  throwing its weight behind the sanctions effort, officials say,  Beijing is also playing a more active role in the recently revived nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. While in past negotiations, Beijing has followed in lockstep the positions taken by Russia, this time Chinese diplomats are offering their own proposals.

“One of the key elements of making this work is unity among the major powers,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic exchanges. “The Chinese have been very good partners in this regard.”

There are also signs of new cooperation on Syria. Only weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called China’s veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution “despicable,” China is supporting Kofi Annan’s peace plan for the strife-torn country and is deploying monitors to help oversee it. Even on North Korea, which China has long sheltered from tougher international action, the Chinese government quickly signed on to a United Nations statement condemning the North’s recent attempt to launch a satellite.

And there is progress on the economic front: American officials said China recently loosened trading on its currency, the remninbi, which could help close a valuation gap with the dollar that has stoked trade tensions between China and the United States during an election year.

To some seasoned observers of China, these developments are less a harbinger of a new era of cooperation between Beijing and Washington than evidence that, at least for now, the interests of the two countries coincide in some important areas.

The administration will nevertheless be happy to pocket the policy dividends.

4)  Staying in Northeast Asia, it turns out that the big bad North Korean ICBMs are little more than a pipe dream -- and western analysts are starting to say that Kim Jong Un is naked in the public square:

North Korea tried to flex its military might with an extravagant parade on April 15, just three days after it admitted that its missile test had been a failure, but analysts now say that the new intercontinental ballistic missiles on display in the meticulously choreographed parade were nothing more than props.

The analysts studied photos of the six missiles and came to their conclusion for three primary reasons: 1. The missiles did not fit the launchers that carried them. 2. The missiles appear to be made out of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that are unable to fly together. 3. The casings on the missiles undulate which suggests the metal is not thick enough to hold up during flight.

"There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups," Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany's Schmucker Technologie , wrote in a paper recently posted on Armscontrolwonk.com. "It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work."

If the U.S. government can claim progress on Iran, China, North Korea, and Japan in one week, that's a good foreign policy week.  Of course, for a lot of these issues, the administration is the beneficieary of circumstances rather that pro-active policies.  Still, the administration deserves some credit for some of these development.

It's just one week, though.  And I fear the most memorable statement about American foreign policy is this rather unfortunate choice of words: 

NOTE TO WHITE HOUSE/CAMPAIGN SPEECHWRITERS:   In the future, avoid having Biden utter any of the following:  "big stick", "hard power", "pounding the enemy",  "won't take no for an answer", and "smooth-talking his adversaries".

Am I missing anything?

ABC News reports on a "hot mic" moment between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: 

At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”

The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.

The exchange:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Now, compared to past "hot mic" moments, this certainly seems less, well, profane.   Nevertheless, it has gotten the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin all hot and bothered about the hidden Obama that will emerge in 2013:

It’s helpful to have a vivid illustration of this, but is there anyone who thinks Obama, should he get a second term, wouldn’t run wild with policies and positions that the majority of the electorate oppose? Otherwise, he’d roll them out now, of course....

Elections are taken as mandates by elected officials and the media (even if the message is less clear than the winner would have us believe).

In sum, the election is not simply a referendum on President Obama’s actions to date; it’s essentially a blank check for the president’s second term. Romney should be asking wary independent and moderates: Is there a scintilla of a chance that Obama would be less liberal in a second term?

Rubin's logic seems pretty clear:  Obama is really a liberal, and free of political constraint -- particularly on the foreign policy remit -- he'll revert to type.  There's just one problem:  based on recent evidence, there's an excellent chance Obama will be less liberal in the second term. 

Consider the last three two-term presidents:  Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43.  I'll grant this is a very small sample, but bear with me.  Did their second-term policies look different from their first-term? 

You bectha.  Reagan tacked in a decidedly liberal direction with respect to the Soviet Union, switching from rhetoric about the "evil empre" to  cutting substantive arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.  Clinton, on the other hand, tacked in a more conservative direction.  After being enamored of multilateralism and leery of using fore in his first term, he became more comfortable with using force and using it outside of UN strictures in his second term.  Finally, Bush 43's second terms was decidedly more liberal.  In his first term, he declared an "Axis of Evil" and invaded Iraq without UN support.  In his second term, however, the Bush administration was decidedly more dovish, working through the UN on both Iran and North Korea, demonstrating a willingness to directly negotiate with the Iranians, and refusing to use force in Syria.  This, by the way, is why claiming a continuity between Bush 43 and Obamas is not quite as much of a political jab as people like to claim.  The dfifferences between Bush in 2003 and Bush in 2008 were massive. 

Now, these narratives are not really as clean as the last paragraph suggests.  Reagan also embraced Iran/Contra in his second term.  In Clinton's second term he pushed hard to address US arrears to the UN.  And Bush had some elements of compasionate conservatism liberalism in his first term, what with PEPFAR and a refusal to declare a clash of civilizations following the 9/11 attacks. 

What's striking, however, is that recent second-termers have not reverted to their ideological bliss point -- if anything it's been the reverse, they've tacked away from their starting point.  Part of this is circumstances.  Reagan had, in Gorbachev, a real negotiating partner in his second term.  Bush had to be more circumspect on Iran and North Korea after the cost and constraint of military operatons in Iraq and Afghanistan.  All three presidents had less favorable legislatures in their second term than their first.

Still, it's not all about circumstances.  What gives?  I'd argue that precisely because presidents have fewer foreign policy constraints than dometic ones, they feel free to pursue their preferred set of policies from day one.  Reality, however, quickly determines which ideas are working and which do  not have any staying power.  Over time, therefore, presidents change tack until they hit on a more successful formula.  This usually means overcoming one's personal ideology and embracing new ideas. 

I've argued that this is exactly what Obama has done in his first term -- and I'm hardly the only one.  And, so, yes, contra Rubin, I think the notion that a second-term of President Obama will be the second coming of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty requires a willful misreading of Obama's first term of foreign policy -- as well as ignorance of the last thirty years of American foreign policy. 

Am I missing anything?