Kathleen Parker: Time to send in the clowns
As I read Vlad’s op-ed in the New York Times, a Judy Collins tune kept replaying in my head: “Isn’t it rich? Isn’t it queer?”
The song, actually written by Stephen Sondheim, although it is Collins’ signature hit, is “Send in the Clowns” and seems an apt soundtrack for current events. As we’ve stalled in making a decision about how to handle Syria (two years and counting), Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad have been allowed to emerge as reasonable heads of state, talking down to the U.S., lecturing us about our misplaced belief in exceptionalism and making demands that mock our president.
Nice work.
Putin hasn’t had this much fun since he rode shotgun in George W. Bush’s truck. Thanks to President Barack Obama, the good times keep on rolling. We now have a catalog of blunders we can attach to Putin-related (Putinesca?) “diplomacy,” a term that becomes more farcical by the day.
Recall that Bush, whose international outreach often included a ride around his Crawford, Texas, ranch, once said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. I have a photograph from the day in Texas that captures the two men grinning. Next we have Obama, who, in an intimate moment with then-outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, conveyed a message to incoming President Putin. Thinking the microphones were off, Obama asked for a little space until after his re-election when he would have more wiggle room on missile defense.
“Wiggle room,” now there’s a foreign policy. As the red line has moved, then blurred, then moved again until now it is nearly invisible, Putin has approached the American people directly via the Times, while Assad issues orders to Washington: He’ll sign the chemical weapons agreement if the U.S. promises to bug off.
Brilliant.
We can’t quite seem to get it quite right at the helm. Either we’re saddled with a cocksure “decidinator” who is feared for his lack of pause or we’re stuck with an over-thinker so afraid of making the wrong decision that he paralyzes himself into a pose of ineptitude. Both profiles can be equally dangerous, depending on circumstances, though inarguably it is better to be feared than pitied. It is painful to watch as Obama is increasingly diminished by his inability to commit to a position that he himself has staked out.
Certitude isn’t always an admirable trait. In fact, in political discourse, it is most often annoying if not downright wrong. Life is not, as it turns out, black and white. Diplomacy is all about exploring the shades of gray. But it is also true that the president of the United States doesn’t get to promise grave consequences for unacceptable behavior and then, failing to follow through, act as though everyone else’s perception is somehow at fault.
“I didn’t set a red line,” Obama has said. “The world set a red line.”
This not only is false but sounds petulant. The president’s speech to the nation Tuesday night struck a better tone, but it was consistently inconsistent in content. Obama conveyed the sense that he really doesn’t know what he intends to do or why.
Recognizing this, Putin now has taken the high road, scolding the U.S. for its “commonplace” interventions in countries not its own.
“Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it,” Putin wrote – and we know Putin cares deeply about America’s long-term interest. “Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘You’re either with us or against us.’ ”
And, it is “extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”
Actually, Vlad, millions around the world do see the U.S. not only as a model of democracy but also as exceptional because, among other things, we let everybody talk. Even clowns. Sing it, Judy.
Whatever the outcome of these fire hydrant gymnastics, a positive result (no U.S. military engagement and an enforceable chemical weapons agreement with Syria) likely will have been accidental. So be it and pass the champagne. But the larger lesson should not get lost in events: Never draw a line unless you are prepared to fight. Erasers make for lousy weapons.