Nick Cohen Is Getting Worse

Seriously.

Would that Obama’s foreign policy were in the tradition of Republican calls for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War. Of refusal to enter the Second World War until actually attacked by either side. Of Eisenhower’s ending of the Korean War, his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, his non-intervention in Indo-China, and his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. Of Nixon’s pursuit of détente with China. Of the ending of the Vietnam War by him and Ford, an old stalwart of the America First Committee. Of the only two conservative things that Reagan ever did, to withdraw from Lebanon in 1983 and to begin nuclear arms reduction in Europe. Of Republican opposition to Clinton’s global trigger-happiness. And of the only conservative thing that George W Bush ever did, to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia after 9/11, thus ensuring that there has been no further attack on American soil.

As it is, Obama is coming, or has already come, to embody the sad and inexplicable fact that, while a President of the United States can be bad at both domestic and foreign policy (Clinton, Bush the Younger), he can only ever be good at one of them. In Obama’s case, he is doing it the FDR-LBJ way round. But even that half-positive assessment depends on the delivery of universal public healthcare, banking reform as announced this week, and the Employee Free Choice Act.