Staying the Course to Disaster

George W. Bush's handlers relish the image that they've created for him; a folksy, regular guy who sticks to his convictions and guides America through troubled waters with a steady hand. "Stay the course" has become a mantra with Iraq war supporters in Congress and especially the White House, as Democrats and critics beg and plead for something, anything to change to try and imrprove the situation there. But it's not just in Iraq where this refusal to change direction has surfaced. Issues like tax cuts and an energy policy that refuses to endorse conservation are just a few examples where Bush has made up his mind and that's the end of the disucssion. This obstinate approach, when applied to foreign policy, is beginning to draw criticism from traditional Republican supporters though, as tensions smolder between Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas and North Korea taunts the world with its shiny new nuclear arsenal.

"In my view, it is not appeasement to talk to your enemies," James Baker, secretary of State for the former President Bush, said this week.

In key election states, the Republican National Committee is offering a different view. It's airing TV ads showing Madeleine Albright, secretary of State for former President Clinton, clinking glasses with Kim Jong Il and presenting the North Korean dictator with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Its point: "basketball diplomacy" doesn't work.
So Republicans are trying to capitalize on a foreign policy disaster that the Bush administration allowed to happen on its watch (the stalled six party talks to try and address North Korea having gone nowhere, with Kim Jong-Il now returning to the table with his own, tested nukes) by blaming it on the Clinton administration and doing more of the same. Having branded North Korea as part of his controversial "axis of evil" and then gone on to do nothing about the country, preferring instead to focus on Iraq, which was not developing nuclear weapons.

But if Bush continues on the same path that he has already laid out for the country, he's not like to be remembered in the same breath as his favorite icon, Ronald Reagan.

"There is a moralist streak in American foreign policy, this idea that you don't talk to bad people, that is not new," says Kemp, who served on the National Security Council in the Reagan White House.

Indeed President Reagan was famous for calling the Soviet Union "the evil empire" - but then embracing Mikhail Gorbachev, saying "I can work with this guy." Kemp says the Reagan administration was "initially standoffish" towards the Soviet Union and took years to receive a Soviet leader. But things changed, he adds, after the president was "won over by the leading pragmatists around him - those being Nancy Reagan and George Schulz."

For years it was taboo for US leaders to speak with the Palestinian Liberation Organization - so much so that Andrew Young lost his job as US ambassador to the United Nations for doing just that. Kemp remembered Alexander Haig's first Middle East trip as secretary of state, when Mr. Haig's insistence that he wouldn't stop in Damascus became the trip's major topic.

The seesaw tipped by the time Clinton took office when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, having renounced the doctrine of Israel's destruction, was a repeat visitor to the White House and "official visits to Damascus were almost every hour on the hour," Kemp quips.
Even Reagan was smart enough to realize that the silent treatment has its place, but there is a time when things need to change and direct diplomacy is the answer. As did Clinton, and even Nixon when he established diplomatic relations with China.

Bush may enjoy the feeling that he is pursuing his vision at the helm of government, with grand delusions that future generations will laud him for his prescience. But at this rate they'll more likely be railing against his stubborn, dimwitted outlook on the world as they continue to clean up the mess he left them.

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