WASHINGTON — Last week, after Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee criticized the Bush administration for an "arrogant bunker mentality" toward the world, rival Mitt Romney rose to George W. Bush's defense. "Mike Huckabee owes the president an apology," Romney said.
But Romney too has criticized the Bush administration, saying the occupation of Iraq was "underplanned, understaffed [and] under-managed," resulting in "a mess."
Other GOP candidates have also found things to dislike in Bush's foreign policy: Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has dismissed the president's campaign for democracy in the Muslim world as naive and opposed his drive to establish a Palestinian state. Sen. John McCain of Arizona thinks Bush hasn't sent enough troops to Iraq and has been too easy on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
One by one, the Republican candidates have been sketching out the lines of a post-Bush foreign policy. Their prescriptions are not identical, and they have been careful to avoid antagonizing Bush loyalists in the GOP base. But all four have edged away from the most ambitious part of Bush's worldview -- the idea that the main goal of U.S. foreign policy should be spreading democracy overseas.
"Republicans are drifting back to a less-exuberant position on global intervention -- for obvious reasons," said Peter Rodman, a former Bush administration official who supports McCain.
"They're saying: 'I'm for all the things in the Bush policy that you liked and that worked -- and as for the other things, I'll do those differently,' " said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy scholar at Johns Hopkins University. "It's a very tricky task. . . . On the one hand, they want to put some distance between themselves and the president because he isn't very popular. But he is popular among the Republican electorate that they are appealing to now, in the primary campaign. It's like walking between raindrops."
All of the leading GOP candidates support the most visible planks of Bush's foreign policy: continuing the war in Iraq, tightening sanctions on Iran and pursuing terrorists in every corner of the globe. But all have said -- at least in tone and style -- they would approach the world differently than Bush.
Former Govs. Romney of Massachusetts and Huckabee of Arkansas have said they would put more emphasis on diplomacy; Giuliani and McCain would be more tough-minded.
