Can the next U.S. president improve relations with the rest of the world?
Posted by Moonage on 28 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: 2008 Presidential Race, International Politics, Polls
That’s the question being asked on CNN right now. Naturally the two Democrat candidates left are battling it out over who the rest of the world will like better. To me that’s not really much of an issue. I’m sure they’ll like either of the two, and probably McCain as well, better. However, that’s appropriate. Bush has not been the abject failure most people like to make him out to be with foreign relations. It’s been clumsy for sure, but it’s been what we had to do. For too long federal focus at the Presidential level has been shifting towards worrying as much or moreso about events happening everywhere BUT in the US. It’s been too focused on convincing the rest of the world to be our best buds when some of them were trying to kill us. It was naive, and misguided. That philosophy I think hit bottom with the second term of Bill Clinton. We sold them missile technology only to have them oppose our efforts to build a missile defense system, capture one of our airplanes, and oppose and completely not support our efforts in the Middle East. Clinton was sidling up to the North Koreans while they were developing nuclear missiles specifically intended to hit the US. I don’t think people quite understood how dangerous Clinton’s policies were. So, given what he had to work with, I think Bush responded appropriately. Most media hated it, Hollywood hated it, and of course all the Democrats hated it. But, the World Trade Towers were NOT the only attack we faced when Bush took over. We HAD to get tough with certain parts of the world. He did that. By doing that, and having Hollywood and media misinterpret and misrepresent what was happening, he had no chance of being successful domestically. But he did it anyway. Now that it’s been done, and it probably needs doing some more, Hillary and Barack get to look back in retrospect and say they would have done it differently.
If they had, we’d be in a world of hurt right now.
The world is a dangerous place. Unless a candidate is willing to face that fact and deal with it realistically, they make me nervous BECAUSE I know they are smart enough to know that once in the Oval Office, they will HAVE to get ugly. So, to say they wouldn’t have, won’t, or have some mythical magical powers, they’re just flat-out lieing.
So far, John McCain is the only one that hasn’t promised us an unrealistic foreign policy. And, for that, Hillary and Barack are using that against him. And for that, a lot of media are as well. Looks like a lot of people didn’t learn squat from September 11, 2001. That is so amazing and disappointing to me.
The next president may or may not improve relations with “the rest of the world”. For me, that’s a moot point in the first place as there is no one entity that is “the rest of the world”. I hate stupidly thought out polls. I only hope the next President improves relations with those countries that are fer us, and gets ugly with those that are agin us. That’s what the next President of the US is mandated to do by the US Constitution. Nowhere in that Constitution does it mandate us to win popularity contests.
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