HANSON

Posted at 7:38 a.m. ET

Victor Davis Hanson, as usual, brings political discussion down to Earth with his historical analysis.  Rhetoric versus reality.  I suspect we're about to see some examples, right before our eyes.

American presidential election rhetoric always paints the incumbent as incompetent in foreign policy, the challenger insightful and skillful. A look at recent history, however, shows that once the opposition gains office, the world suddenly becomes not so black and white.

The outsider Dwight Eisenhower charged President Harry Truman's administration with defeatist incompetence in Korea. Yet, in 1953, President Eisenhower continued Democratic war policies, reached a stalemate at the DMZ, and reclaimed Truman's prior unpopular war policy as his own inspired victory...

...Maverick Jimmy Carter claimed that cold warriors Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had raised tensions with the Soviet Union due to an "inordinate fear of communism." Soon a red-faced President Carter scrambled to boycott the 1980 Russian Olympics and beef up the Pentagon after global Soviet aggression from Afghanistan to Central America.

Ah, Carter.  Mr. Goodness.  And more recently...

After the interventions of the trigger-happy Reagan and Bush Sr., feel-your-pain Bill Clinton was convinced that his charisma could achieve through diplomacy what his predecessors had failed at through their clumsy use of force. But after 1993, President Clinton ended up bombing or shooting Afghans, Iraqis, Serbians, Somalis and Sudanese -- without consulting either Congress or the United Nations.

Ah yes, I remember it well.

Once upon a time, Obama or his supporters variously asserted that Iran was a hyped-up threat, that we could go openly into Pakistan if need be after al-Qaida, that the surge wouldn't work, that the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo Bay prison have torn asunder the Constitution, that we have alienated our European allies, that defeating terrorists is more a matter for criminal justice than military force, and that pushing democracy on traditional Islamic societies is culturally chauvinistic and naive.

Vaguely remember that, too.

But like his predecessors, the Obama administration will quickly learn that present U.S. foreign policy is mostly a result of reasonable decisions taken amid bad and worse choices. Therefore, don't be surprised if a President Obama continues much of what we are now doing -- albeit with a kinder, gentler rhetoric of "multilateralism" and "U.N. accords."

What will The One do?

As Inauguration Day approaches and campaign rhetoric ends and governance begins, words begin to have consequences. The truth is there are not many alternatives to the present general strategy against Islamic terrorism.

President Obama doesn't want a terrorist attack after seven years of quiet -- certainly not of the sort that occurred in Mumbai last month. He may tinker with, but not end, Homeland Security measures.

Finally...

Most conservatives and moderates expected that candidate Obama's grand campaign talk of novel choices abroad would end with President Obama's realist admission of very few new options.

His problem is instead his left-wing base, which believed Obama's electioneering bombast that he could magically make the world anew -- and so now apparently should do just that or else!

Can you imagine what would happen if Code Pink put up a candidate against Obama?  Why, the thought is just so exciting.  Ralph Lauren in the morning, revolution in the afternoon.

December 18, 2008.