Obama's foreign policy triumph

There is a superb article in the Guardian today by Michael Tomasky, the Guardian's American editor, on Obama's powerful counterstrike against the criticism leveled at him by George W Bush. Bush recently took advantage of a visit to the Israeli Knesset to launch an attack on Obama's proposed policy of talking without preconditions to America's enemies. Tomasky takes up the story:

Last Thursday, speaking before the Knesset in Jerusalem, George Bush compared "some" Democrats to those who thought in 1939 that war might have been avoided if we'd just been able to sit down with Hitler and talk some sense into him. This was, despite some White House demurrals, a clear shot at Obama, who has repeatedly announced his intention to negotiate personally as president, and "without preconditions", with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez.

John McCain, that same Thursday morning, was giving a speech in part about the need to move beyond the partisan bickering of the last decade. Within an hour or two, following Bush's lead, McCain attacked Obama: "What does he want to talk about with Ahmadinejad, who said Israel is a stinking corpse?" The Obama campaign emailed reporters accusing Bush of launching "a false political attack".

Tomasky argues that earlier Democratic contenders, such as Kerry, would have simply ducked this one, while Bill Clinton would have attempted to turn the agenda back to the economy. Hillary, if her own foreign policy had been questioned, would have merely reiterated a more hawkish position, such as her recent assertion that under certain circumstances America could "obliterate" Iran. Obama is unique in hitting back powerfully and coherently to defend his own position, at the same time pointing out that McCain had also stated in 2006 that he would talk directly to Hamas. Wittily, Obama also proceeded to emphasise the difference in foreign policy between the younger and older Bush as presidents, suggesting he preferred the less aggressive and intrusive foreign policy of the older Bush. Tomasky says - correctly in my view - that Obama won this initial confrontation, a first for a non-hawkish Democrat in the traditional republican "stronghold" area of foreign policy.

For those who have predicted that the future presidential campaign will revolve around the McCain/Republican claim that Obama cannot be trusted with America's security, this initial confrontation suggests a novel new turn. After losing the first engagement, the Republicans should not too easily assume their natural chief weapon against Obama is security and foreign policy.

This is the second time in the last few months that Obama has demonstrated his uniquely powerful intellect as a liberal Democratic candidate. The first was his historic speech of March 18 asserting that if America's racial problems were to be healed, the country must face up to the fact that a significant number of black Americans, especially of an older generation, viewed America as their oppressor and would be inclined to sympathise with the underlying anger, if not the precise extremist expressions, of his former pastor Reverend Wright.

Tomasky's coverage of the American election has been unfailingly excellent. He and Andrew Sullivan, of the Sunday Times, have provided a continuous commentary of superb quality to a British readership increasingly aware of the extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented political developments that are taking place in America in the dying year of the Bush administration.

This blog is deeply interested in Obama not least because of his remarkable literary credentials. In our view, he is the most literate (in the fullest possible meaning of the term) of American presidential candidates since the political giants of the Enlightenment. 

By contrast, for a typically lucid account of McCain's candidacy, it is worth reading Andrew Sullivan's most recent Sunday Times article on McCain's adoption of Cameronian techniques to detoxify the Republican image in the wake of George W Bush's two terms. Even more conservative Republicans are beginning to recognise that McCain's version of compassionate conservatism is the only strategy which can compete effectively against Obama for the unusually large proportion of centrist or "uncommitted" voters. The forthcoming battle between Obama and McCain will explore entirely new territory, is likely to significantly redefine left and right, and promises to be fascinating.