Back in the good old days the lilberal Joseph Nye regaled us with the importance of “soft power.” That’s the power of words and of culture and of diplomacy. Much nicer than the brutality of evil Bush-Cheney-neocon “hard” power which was such a disaster in Iraq.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is a perfect poster boy for the idea of “soft” power. Until now.
The thing about power is that power is power. It’s not kumbaya time in the old world or even in the new world. Not yet. Maybe not ever. There are still thug dictators and there are still Russian bears, and there are still politico-revolutionary regimes like Iran.
So when the Russians start a march through Georgia (the one next to the Black Sea) the liberal “soft” power doctrine looks pretty lame.
It makes things really hard, as Jonah Goldberg writes, for a candidate that falters once he gets off the script.
After the 2004 election Democrats and lefties decided they were outraged by the successful “swift-boat” campaign that successfully attacked Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) credentials as a war veteran. It is clear that the “Obama off the script” meme that conservatives are pushing is a campaign in the same category. Liberals are suddenly going to wake up one morming and realize that their candidate has been skunked by the eevil Republican off-the-script campaign. Or the eevil McCain “celebrity” campaign.
And they will declare that it is worse than McCarthyism.
But the fact is that Democrats are wrong on national defense. Soft power won’t do the job. Exquisitely scripted candidates won’t do the job. Inexperienced candidates won’t do the job.
It’s a dangerous world out there, full of thug dictators and power-mad revolutionaries. Our job is to stop them. And that takes power. Hard power.
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