A 19th century critique of a 21st century president
ONE OF THE unintended consequences of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- which prohibits anyone from being elected president more than twice -- is that George W. Bush will never have to run on the record of his second term. This is fortunate for the Republican Party. It is a tragedy for the Democrats.
If President Bush were to run for reelection in 2008, it is not difficult to imagine the devastating indictment that might be made of his foreign policy. One reason is that the terms of such an indictment were brilliantly anticipated in Britain more than a century ago.
In 1878, William Ewart Gladstone came out of retirement to reclaim the leadership of the Liberal party and unleash a lethal rhetorical assault against his archrival, Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
In a series of marathon speeches to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands, Gladstone eviscerated Disraelian foreign policy as a disastrous mixture of vainglorious imperialism, cynical realpolitik and fiscal improvidence. His speech of Nov. 27, 1879, in which he set out his principles of foreign policy, reads amazingly well today.
Gladstone's first principle was, paradoxically, "good government at home" -- to be precise, fiscal stability. "The first thing," he argued, "is to foster the strength of the empire by just legislation and economy at home." By that measure Bush's second term has been an almost unqualified failure. To cut taxes and run deficits in 2001, in the aftermath of a stock market crash, made sense. But allowing the federal government to continue to run deficits with recovery well established has left the U.S. dangerously dependent on foreign capital for its economic stability.
Gladstone's second principle was that the aim of foreign policy should be "to preserve to the nations of the world
Principle number three reads especially well today. "Even when you do a good thing," Gladstone observed, "you may do it in so bad a way that you may entirely spoil the beneficial effect." Ring any bells? That's just the way to nail this administration without falling into the obvious rhetorical trap of arguing that we should have left Saddam Hussein in power. Yes, you can indeed ruin the effect of doing a good thing -- getting rid of a brutal, potentially dangerous dictator -- by doing it in a bad way: failing to preserve public order in the aftermath.
