'Leading from behind' could doom O

John Podhoretz

The reliably liberal New Yorker magazine isn't usually in the habit of presenting gifts to the Republican Party, but it has just published three little words that may prove central to the GOP effort to defeat President Obama next year. Those words are "leading from behind," and they appear at the end of a Ryan Lizza article on Obama's foreign policy.

Lizza didn't coin the phrase. "Leading from behind" is a direct quote from of "one of [Obama's] advisers," who is describing his boss' policy on Libya. That same adviser goes on to say that the effort to lead from behind is "so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world. But it's necessary for shepherding us through this phase."

And there you have it: the 2012 campaign against Obama's foreign policy in a nutshell. By the time Election Day rolls around, if the GOP knows what's good for it, the phrase "leading from behind" will be the "yes, we can" of 2012.

The reason the phrase is so devastating is that "leading from behind" wasn't intended as criticism but rather as a sympathetic, even proud, defense of the administration's approach and goals.

Lizza describes it thus: "It's a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the US is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the US is reviled in many parts of the world."

It is one thing to argue that the United States has made mistakes in foreign and defense policy. Everybody believes that, however deep our disagreements about what those mistakes are.

It is something entirely different, and much more profoundly serious, for a presidency to be operating on the basis that the United States can only lead if it "leads from behind" because the country's power is "declining" and because America "is reviled in many parts of the world."

Is this something that the independent voters Obama will desperately need next year will be pleased to hear? One gets the sense that they are riven with anxiety about their future and the country's future. This is not the sort of talk that will calm that anxiety.

Quite the opposite. It would, rather, seem custom-made to provoke anxiety about Obama's leadership. In the first place, "leading from behind" makes no sense logically or grammatically, so it confuses before it enlightens. And then, once you figure it out, the problems really begin.

A nation's declining power isn't like the moon's effect on the tide, caused by forces beyond our control. It is the result of actions, behaviors, ideas. If the White House truly believes the authority of the United States has suffered a decline, then its paramount responsibility is to reverse that decline.

Even for those who don't care about foreign policy, it should make little sense for the planet's most powerful nation to allow its position in the world to erode.

That erosion isn't bad news because it's good fun to be the Big Man on the World Campus. It's bad news because the continued erosion of America's influence will inexorably lead to military, strategic and economic challenges for the United States that will make the current geopolitical chessboard look like a game of Candyland.

And yet one gets the distinct sense not that Obama has been forced into the position of "leading from behind" by the circumstances in which he finds himself, but rather that he wants to "lead from behind."

In one sense, that's entirely understandable: The burdens of world leadership are exceptionally heavy at the moment, and seem quite thankless. But then, nobody told Barack Obama to run for president, and no one is telling him to run for re-election.

Of course, this article and that pithy three-word closing phrase just made that challenge significantly more difficult.