Tim Pawlenty’s Presidential campaign may be stranger than any of his rivals’. For some candidates – Gingrich, Cain – running for the Republican nomination is an outlet for excess egomania. For others – Johnson, Paul – it’s an opportunity to raise issues and a style of conservatism that’s notably unfashionable. Others – Bachmann, Palin, Huntsman – fly a standard for sectional interests within the broader conservative movement. And Romney, of course, is interested in winning.
But Pawlenty? What’s he about? Quite. There’s no interesting reason for Pawlenty to run at all. His starting ambition appears to be the “Oh God, I suppose he’ll have to do” candidate. His appeal – to abuse the word – lies in being the compromise candidate still standing once all the others have been rejected. His ceiling is limited. Selecting Pawlenty will be like one of those disappointing Booker Prize panels when the bauble is awarded to everyone’s third-choice novel. That’s fine for a literary prize but an inauspicious beginning for a Presidential campaign.
So it’s not a surprise that Pawlenty appears to be running as Mr Generic Republican. Nor is it astonishing that he gave a dreadful speech on foreign policy this week. That’s what being Mr Generic Republican demands and Pawlenty duly stooped low to pass that threshold. It’s a cheap shot to observe that the proof of this is that Michael Ledeen loved it but there you go. Rather better verdicts have been delivered by Andrew Exum, Conor Fridersdorf and Daniel Larison.
Now, sure, Pawlenty offered some reasonable criticisms of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the middle east but at no point was there any indication that, actually, finding the right, balanced, approach to the middle east is exceptionally difficult. Nor, obviously, was there a recognition that progress in one area may produce an unsavoury setback in another. This stuff is difficult and there’s wisdom in modesty.
Not for Pawlenty, however, for whom the world appears simple even when the logic of his speech – on Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel especially – demands he recognise the inctractable nature of the problems he’s supposed to be addressing. On the contrary American willpower will always be enough because America will always be exceptional. This is good enough – just – for an undergraduate debating society; it’s not quite enough for a plausible Presidential candidate.
Perhaps Pawlenty thinks this Bush-era approach – one lathered with self-righteousness – offers an opening given the doubts the likes of Romney and Huntsman have expressed about Afghanistan (to take but one issue). His peroration certainly suggests so:
What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world. History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we’ll save in a budget line item.
America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.
Our enemies in the War on Terror, just like our opponents in the Cold War, respect and respond to strength. Sometimes strength means military intervention. Sometimes it means diplomatic pressure. It always means moral clarity in word and deed.
Maybe. But, actually, oh dear. It makes for nice headlines and can leave y’all feeling good about yourselves but this is not an approach moored to reality, far less to history or the likely future. American leadership is swell and, if there must be global leadership, certainly preferable to any of the alternatives even putatively available. Nevertheless it is not the case that its falures have been caused by a lack of boldness, too much prevarication or an acceptance of decline.
Moreover precisely nothing Pawlenty says in his speech suggests he has any better idea than you or I on how to manage the problems of Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. It would be one thing if Pawlenty appreciated that these are problems to be managed; alas he seems to believe they can be “solved” if only the American president wishes it so. If it were that simple perhaps it might have happened. Alas, Mr Generic Republican is the anti-Canute running for President – that is he seems to believe, as Canute did not – that the Priest-King can roll back the tide simply by demonstrating sufficient moral clarity to make it so.
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