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Huntsman’s Anti-Obama Opening, and Why He Won’t Take It

Jim Geraghty has imagined a scenario in which Jon Huntsman launches his 2012 candidacy by launching a major attack on Obama’s conduct of foreign policy. Here is a sample: And then, in detail, Huntsman paints a picture of an administration that is flailing, frozen with indecision, short-sighted, often at war with itself, disorganized, and ultimately […]

Jim Geraghty has imagined a scenario in which Jon Huntsman launches his 2012 candidacy by launching a major attack on Obama’s conduct of foreign policy. Here is a sample:

And then, in detail, Huntsman paints a picture of an administration that is flailing, frozen with indecision, short-sighted, often at war with itself, disorganized, and ultimately lacking any sense of what it wanted to do after Obama had finished his apology tour.

He says things like, “The charm offensive wasn’t just this president’s first foreign-policy tool; it was his only one. And when it failed to achieve significant concessions from either our allies or our foes, the president and the team around him had no plan B.”

He points out that Obama and Hillary’s constant invocation of a “reset” button reflects an immature yearning to go back to some earlier, simpler time, out of a misplaced nostalgic belief that foreign-policy challenges were easier to solve in past years, and a tacit admission that they cannot make progress in current circumstances. “We have to deal with the world as it is; yelling ‘do-over’ doesn’t even work in the schoolyard.”

Huntsman sets a record for talking out of school, sharing a series of anecdotes that make Joe Biden look cloddish, Hillary Clinton frustrated, dismissed, and quick to lash out, David Axelrod meddling in areas he doesn’t understand, and the man at the top so far out of his league he terrifies Huntsman.

Huntsman shares frustrating tales of trying to be the voice of reason while the president tried to tailor his foreign policies to the whims of congressional Democrats [bold mine-DL]. He laments that Obama’s Middle East vision begins and ends with Israeli settlements, that he effectively sold out Iranian democracy protesters in pursuit of a Quixotic dream of a summit with Tehran, and that in two short years he has snubbed India and insulted almost every major ally.

Put another way, let’s suppose that Huntsman starts off his 2012 candidacy by telling making a lot of false claims and indulging the most demagogic misrepresentations of what Obama has done. Would this “inflict serious damage” on Obama? It would probably inflict some damage if the accusations didn’t sound like Republican boilerplate. It would help even more if there were much substance to any of these claims. There was no apology tour. He “snubbed” India so much that he publicly endorsed their desire for a permanent seat on the Security Council. Say whatever else you want about that gesture, but it was one that the Indian government greatly appreciated. There are two allies that might be included among the “insulted.” These would be Japan under Hatoyama and Turkey after the negotiation on the nuclear deal, but that isn’t what Geraghty means when he puts this claim in Huntsman’s mouth. The idea that Obama’s foreign policy has been an exercise in placating Congressional Democrats is quite funny. There is hardly any decision one can point to that was made out of deference to Democrats in Congress.

The “reset” with the Russians in particular was a deliberate effort to try to repair some of the damage that the previous administration had caused to the U.S.-Russian relationship. As far as I can tell, it had nothing to do with nostalgia for a simpler time, but stemmed from a desire to avoid policies that needlessly provoked Moscow and undermined securing shared interests. To a limited degree, the “reset” has done what it was supposed to do, and it has yielded arms reduction and nuclear cooperation agreements as well as some support for U.S. policies on Iran and Afghanistan. Huntsman could not make a detailed indictment on these counts, because the specific claims are largely or wholly untrue.

Instead of inflicting damage on Obama, it would annihilate the rationale for Huntsman’s candidacy as Huntsman’s supporters understand it. As misguided as Huntsman would be in seeking the Republican nomination, it makes even less sense for him to seek it by indulging in exactly the sort of pettiness and demagoguery that he and his supporters evidently see as serious flaws in contemporary politics. I suspect the gap between what mainstream conservatives believe about Obama’s foreign policy and what Huntsman would actually say about it is large, which is one more reason why Huntsman’s candidacy doesn’t make any sense.

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