The American Exceptionalist vs. the Internationalist

Barack Obama is the most articulate yet polarizing president since Ronald Reagan. George Friedman, writing for Stratfor , points out a number of similarities between the two:

• Each succeeded a president who began his presidency with high hopes and support but squandered his popularity by the time he left office
• The predecessors of both Reagan and Obama left office amid a serious recession
• Each emphasized the foreign policy challeges that the faraway country of Afghanistan would present, although each for a different reason
• Neither President Reagan nor President Obama enjoyed landslide victories over their opponents, each winning about half the votes cast
• Each tried to change the way the world looked at the United States, although in different ways
  

Yet there are significant differences between the two presidents. President Reagan totally repudiated the foreign and military policy of his predecessor, the feckless Jimmy Carter. The Carter foreign policy was defined by the Iranian hostage crisis -50 Americans captured and held prisoner for over a year, along with their once proud nation. The Reagan foreign policy, on the other hand, was defined by  the bombing of Libya in swift retailiation for the Libyan bombing of a German night club in which American service personnel died. ("They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue .")

President Obama, on the other hand, for all of his left-leaning rhetoric, has largely continued the policies of his precessor George W. Bush, according to Friedman. He continues to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, adding troops to the latter and continuing Pres. Bush's strategy in the former. He has continued the Bush policy of Nato expansion in to Georgia and Ukraine. And he has adopted the Bush strategy of advocating sanctions in the case of some the worlds bad actors in places like Iran and North Korea.

Yet there is a stark difference between Presidents Reagan and Obama, with regard to foreign policy. Pres. Reagan was a firm believer in American exceptionalism . American exceptionalism is the belief that America is a unique country with a special role to play in human history. Turning the tide in two world wars. The Marshall Plan to save post-War Europe from economic collapse. Countless rescue and recovery missions in the face of natural disasters. Inventions and innovations. A land of bountiful opportunity. For Pres Reagan, American was and will always be that "shining city on a hill ."

Pres. Obama, on the other hand is an internationalist. He believes that among nations no country, the U.S. included, stands above any other. Americans who view the president cautiously point to his apparent bowing to foreign leaders like Emporer Akihito  of Japan or the Saudi king , his speech in Cairo  apologizing for alleged past American transgressions against the Muslim world, and his deference to the opinions of other world leaders as evidence that he does not believe that America stands above other nations.

This difference is keenly seen in the views held by non-Americans of the two men. While Pres. Reagan grew in popularity at home as his muscular foreign policy took shape, he was, frankly, reviled  in Europe. Conversely Pres. Obama's popularity at home continues to drop as American exceptionalism declines, and the Europeans love him for it, to the point of awarding him the Nobel Prize for Peace, albeit with no real reason to do so.

President Reagan's foreign policy restored America's confidence in itself both at home and abroad. In his first year as president, Mr. Obama's internationalism has yielded few results, other than his own Nobel Prize. The longer this goes on, the more likely we are to slip into the "malaise " of defeatism that marked the Carter presidency. Pres. Obama has time to turn it around, to create a foreign policy that will define his presidency and restory the confidence of Americans in themselves as an exceptional country.

But the time for doing that is beginning to run out.

Just thought you might like to know.