So much time explaining why sending Obama to the Oval Office was a terrible idea, all wasted on an electorate that fell in love with
buzzwords and catchphrases. This is going to be a long, expensive four years.
The American foreign policy consensus of the last sixty years — in contrast to the consensus of the hundred seventy before that — is marked by a belief that the projection of American power abroad inures to America’s benefit at home, a belief honed in recent times into the idea that a de facto benign American imperium would, without real imperialism, result in a more peaceful, orderly, and prosperous world, and the data bears this out. President Obama is actively retreating from this consensus. But he is not retreating in an orderly way, consistent with his promise to improve America’s image abroad during the campaign. He is leaving the old, decades-long consensus in bloodied ribbons, with no real substitute except for what appears to be a deliberately amoral interaction with the world.
