THE WASHINGTON POST, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1979
Ask a Republican or any of a broad range of grieving Democrats what the big issue against Jimmy Carter is going to be, and he will answer ÛÏforeign policy.Û This is hardly surprising, since whether or not you blame this administration, there is no denying that American policy abroad-has been sustaining an uncommon share of disasters and disappointments on CarterÛªs watch. What ivill be surprising is if the national political argument over these things materializes in a tough-minded, energetic and interesting way, or if it even materializes at all. Foreign-policy opposition is one of the things we do worst in this countryÛÓfitfully, unhappily, nervously, noisily, inconclusively and, given all that, fortunately not very often.</br></br>It is no accident that when an American wishes to praise (or assume) the role of an uncompromising, right-minded foreign-policy critic, he will start talking about foreignersÛÓWinston Churchill usually; sometimes and for special cases, Charles de Gaulle. Our history will, if pressed, provide our own examples of the vindicated, patriotic opposition figure. But the models and images and metaphors that are within range of our current-day collective memory, and which dominate our political culture, tend to run in another direction. In these little mental pictures, which are in their way the precedents and frame of reference for our discussions, very nearly everything to do with foreign-policy opposition is troublesome, reckless, wrong.</br></br>There is opposition as obstruction, personified in the figure of the elder Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge successfully thwarting Woodrow WilsonÛªs League of Nations dream. There is opposition as narrow-minded, provincial self-concern: the isolationists of the Ûª30s. There is opposition as subversion, disloyalty and treasonÛÓthe right-wing view of the Roosevelt-Truman legacy in the postwar years; and there is the corollary: opposition as precisely the kind. of. mean-minded attack that was made on that legacy, opposition, in short, as Joe McCarthyism. There is opposition as a kind of insubordinationÛÓGeneral MacArthurvand his civilian eggers-on defying Harry TrumanÛªs command in Korea. There is opposition as a mass of antiwar demonstrators, looking preternaturally shaggy and threatening and making obscene gestures on the TV screen.</br></br>On the other side, the images to be emulated and revered, we have of course the converted onetime isolationist Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, doing the responsible, bipartisan internationalist thing in the critical years after World War n. We have all those congressional committee chairmen, with whom an administration could consult and make policy and deal, and on whom a secretary of state could count for discretion, private guidance, public help.</br></br>The apogee of great political foreign-affairs Û¢leadership in this country is not fairly summed up by a mindÛªs-eye picture of Winston Churchill in early opposition. It is more nearly summed up in that famous photo image of John Kennedy and IkeÛÓbacks to us, heads slightly lowered, exuding grim solidarity as they walk along a path at Camp David where Ike had come after the Bay of Pigs debacle to demonstrate his one-for-all-and-all-for-one, bipartisan fellow-feeling for Kennedy and the country in distress. Not incidentally, Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater too had visited Kennedy for the kind of solemn talk and show-of-sup-port meeting that certifies true foreign-policy leadership in this particular scheme of things.