On the main blog, some commenters have pointed out the disagreement between my column for The Week and Mr. Buchanan’s recent columns concerning Obama’s latest trip overseas. Because we are coming at this from more or less the same perspective as far as political and policy views are concerned, I think it is worthwhile to explain why I have responded to Obama’s appearance at the Summit of the Americas as I have. Long-time readers will know that it is not because of any particular fondness for Obama on my part. Neither is it because I have any great confidence that Obama is likely to change U.S. foreign policy in significant, fundamental ways that I think are needed. Indeed, I find that I am often compelled to defend Obama in spite of his own policy views because of the errors of his critics and the awful nature of the alternatives they propose.

One reason I take a different view is that I have found myself drawn to Kennan’s view of how foreign policy should be conducted, which included his wariness of the influence popular passions and domestic politics can have on foreign policy, and I am also increasingly sympathetic with the estrangement from his own contemporary America that he felt. After reviewing John Lukacs’ biography of Kennan, I obtained a clear picture of a man who was perhaps as viscerally patriotic as any and thoroughly Midwestern in his attachments, but who also felt estranged from his country and what it was becoming. As Lukacs put it:

He would, because he must, remain loyal to his country. “But it would be a loyalty despite, not a loyalty because, a loyalty of principle, not of identification.”

As a Foreign Service officer and diplomat who lived abroad or served in Washington for many years, Kennan might be superficially grouped with “rootless” people, but I rather tend to think of Kennan’s experience as one of an exile in his own country–an unchosen dislocation that resembles unchosen obligations in its effects. This was because the country was transformed around him, which did not lessen his attachment to it, but it also made him more aware of the dangers of American self-congratulation because he did not share in any of its triumphalist moods.

Lukacs writes elsewhere in the biography:

Early in his life he found that he agreed with the admonition of another former midwesterner, Reinhold Niebhur: “The Gospel cannot be preached with truth and power if it does not challenge the pretensions and pride, not only of intellectuals, but of nations, cultures, civilizations, economic and political systems. The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation.”

It may simply be coincidence that one of the wisest foreign policy thinkers of the last half century and one of the best today, Andrew Bacevich, are influenced by Niebuhr, particularly as his work relates to restraining power and pride. I would not try to make any far-reaching claims that Obama’s own reported interests in Niebhur necessarily have anything to do with how he has conducted himself in office, but to the extent that he has learned to be wary of too much American self-congratulation (in which he still indulges on occasion) it may be reasonable to assume that he picked up some of this caution from Niebuhr.

What I have noticed about most of the statements Obama made that have come in for criticism is that they are acknowledgments of things that pretty much everyone accepts as fact. For example, whether or not one thinks that Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament is serious or feasible, his remark that the U.S. has been the only state to use nuclear weapons in war is obviously true. It does not necessarily follow from his statement that he thinks the nuclear strikes on Japan were unjustified, but that he apparently thinks America has an exceptional responsibility to lead in nonproliferation and disarmament because of this reality, which is actually an expression of a sort of American exceptionalism. However, it is an exceptionalism that seems to be tempered by some aversion to self-congratulation or self-adulation, which I have come to regard as something very different from, if not actually diametrically opposed to, patriotism.

As I have quoted or paraphrased so many times from Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill, “Above all, he knew the supreme psychological fact about patriotism, as certain in connection with it as that a fine shame comes to all lovers, the fact that the patriot never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it.” If one’s patriotism is instinctive and visceral, I think this is the patriotism one feels and practices. As Chesterton went on to say, “All this he knew, not because he was a philosopher or a genius, but because he was a child.”

Returning to the specific point, to the extent that foreign leaders attack past or present U.S. policies, they are not necessarily directing their attacks against the country. They are attacking specific acts of the government, some of which may be deserving of criticism and some of which many Americans likely also opposed or oppose now. One of the crucial distinctions that patriots need to make is between country and government. Even if it were advisable as a matter of policy to push back against Ortega’s tirade, doing this would not be a testament to anyone’s patriotism but to his willingness to serve as a defender of any and all past government actions. I submit that not rebutting charges against past administrations is not necessarily a sign of detachment from Middle America, whether or not Obama is otherwise estranged from Middle Americans, but instead might be proof of an unusual unwillingness to show solidarity with Washington.