Can Obama be neo-Machiavellian?
By David Ignatius,
What is President Obama doing with his bob-and-weave Syria policy that seemingly bounces between bombing and diplomacy in the space of 15 minutes? The answer tells us some worrying things about the breakdown of America’s old foreign-policy consensus and Obama’s difficulty creating a new one.
Look behind the White House veil and here’s what you see: The president correctly believes that, in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan, the country is sick of war and mistrustful of politicians. The traditional center ground on which foreign policy is made (“politics stops at the water’s edge”) has disappeared. The left and right are equally suspicious of foreign entanglements.
How does a president who wants to be a liberal internationalist rally the nation to enforce norms against chemical weapons? Obama’s answer has been to conduct a kind of public experiment: Instead of acting unilaterally as commander in chief, he has asked a divided Congress for counsel. Predictably, this has produced a cacophony, and Obama — despite a strong speech Tuesday night — is accused of playing both sides.
Basically, the president is mirroring the public’s split personality. He wants to lead but he wants to listen, too. He wants to end wars but also to intervene militarily. He wants to stay out of the Syrian war and also support the opposition. To resolve this confusion, he proposes an inductive kind of leadership: As he read from people’s letters Tuesday, it sounded almost like government by focus group.
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