Help wanted

Wanted: Defender of American Interests

Christopher Caldwell, writing in the Financial Times, observes:

The UN speech gives a hint to why the percentage of the US population that is uneasy with Mr Obama has grown steadily. The coolness that was so appealing in the campaigner is a liability in the president. Mr Obama is more comfortable analysing the international alignment of interests than in defending the particular interests of the US. In fact, to say, as he does, that “the interests of nations and peoples are shared” is to say that national interest is an illusion in the first place.

Caldwell is getting to a much under-discussed aspect of the UN speech. Conservatives are rightly outraged by Obama’s obsessive denigration of America and his reliance on mythical international consensus. Moderates are a bit nervous that he sounds sophomoric and naive. But Caldwell points to the gap, not between reality and Obama’s worldview, but between Obama’s view of America and Americans’ view of America.

Obama plainly embodies that mindset of liberal elites. America is flawed. America has no distinct message or values, and its interests are entitled to no more weight than Belgium’s or Cuba’s. It’s wrongheaded to assert our national interests. We should be seeking consensus and righting the great wrongs that America has done to other nations—both its stinginess in redistributing wealth and its failure to cater to other nations’ geopolitical and psychological concerns. Russia needs reassuring. The Arabs need validation. And it’s the president’s job to lower America’s profile so as to not incur the wrath of hostile powers.

Average Americans don’t buy into any of this. They have the notion—ridiculed by Obama and his supporters—that America is unique, both in its attributes and in its role in the world. They might grow weary of the burdens and prefer shorter and less costly wars (what democratic people do not?), but the notion that we should simply go along with the crowd, avoid hurting Russian sensibilities, or accede to false historical narratives of Arab nations in contravention to our own interests and those of our allies are alien and off-putting to them. If Iran is a threat to the world, ordinary Americans expect their president to do something about it, not merely call another meeting to talk with thugs spouting genocidal nonsense.

Sure Americans want to be “liked”—but they, unlike their president, don’t suppose that the way to be liked is to defer to bullies and madmen. They expect the president to be defending their interests, their security, and their nation’s values.

Read the rest here.