Scott McConnell comments on Jacob Heilbrunn’s new article on Romney and realism:

But Heilbrunn is somewhat optimistic because of what he calls Romney’s “oleaginous” character. He will tack according to the winds, and the winds are more often realist than neocon.

As I have said before, I think that it is a mistake to believe that Romney will suddenly embrace a kind of foreign policy that he has gone out of his way to reject as a candidate. Not only is there is nothing in the public record to substantiate the hope that Romney will turn towards realism once in office, but it is very unusual for a first-term President to go so far as repudiating the positions he ran on. The best that anyone can do is to argue that Romney is so completely dishonest that everything he says can be discounted, but no one should be interested in having a habitual liar on one’s “side.” Romney responds to political incentives, but what incentives would he have to move away from his current hard-line policies if he managed to win the election while espousing them? Romney would try to distinguish himself from his predecessor at least during the first year by making a point of rejecting a policy closely associated with Obama, and at present that would probably mean seriously damaging the relationship with Russia or committing the U.S. to a larger role in Syria. Paul Ryan has also attacked Obama for being “Nixonian” in his engagement with authoritarian regimes, so what are the odds that Romney and Ryan are going to discover the virtues of detente once elected?

The hope is that Romney might appoint relatively less obnoxious people to important positions in his administration. I don’t think that will happen, but even if it did that wouldn’t be much reassurance. Romney would still be the one making the final decisions. It should go without saying that appointing realists by itself guarantees little or nothing. Top officials in the first Bush term were considered to be realists, and they helped preside over one of the greatest debacles in modern U.S. foreign policy in no small part because their realist inclinations were ignored or abandoned. One wouldn’t have thought it possible that the U.S. would ignore the Powell Doctrine when Powell was Secretary of State and the U.S. was launching a major war, but it did, and that was in an administration filled with veterans of the elder Bush’s administration. Romney’s administration will be filled with veterans of the George W. Bush years. Someone willing to say and do anything for political gain would be exceptionally dangerous in the White House. Ultimately, it is the judgment of the President that matters most, and nothing Romney has said on the subject inspires any confidence that he has good judgment.