Dean's World

The President's speech got mixed reviews abroad. But it also came in for some snarky criticism from usually friendly quarters...

UPDATE: I've never EVER heard of an administration having to do what amounts to damage control ("clarification") on a painstakingly-written inaugural speech, but it appears to be what is happening now.

White House officials said yesterday that President Bush's soaring inaugural address, in which he declared the goal of ending tyranny around the world, represents no significant shift in U.S. foreign policy but instead was meant as a crystallization and clarification of policies he is pursuing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Nor, they say, will it lead to any quick shift in strategy for dealing with countries such as Russia, China, Egypt and Pakistan, allies in the fight against terrorism whose records on human rights and democracy fall well short of the values Bush said would become the basis of relations with all countries.

Bush advisers said the speech was the rhetorical institutionalization of the Bush doctrine and reflected the president's deepest convictions about the purposes behind his foreign policies. But they said it was carefully written not to tie him to an inflexible or unrealistic application of his goal of ending tyranny.

"It has its own policy implications, but it is not to say we're not doing this already," said White House counselor Daniel J. Bartlett. "It is important to crystallize the debate to say this is what it is all about, to say what are our ideals, what are the values we cherish."

"It is not a discontinuity. It is not a right turn," said a senior administration official, who spoke with reporters from newspapers but demanded anonymity because he wanted the focus to remain on the president's words and not his. "I think it is a bit of an acceleration, a raising of the priority, making explicit in a very public way to give impetus to this effort." He added that it was a "message we have been sending" for some time.

Did Lincoln's, JFK's, FDR's, Ronald Reagan's, Dwight Eisenhowers, Bill Clinton's advisors have to do this? When they have to say "It is not this...It is not that...It is not so and so" it means a failure of a basic goal: clear communication of a message.

This story notes that GWB's neoconservative supporters loved the speech but it got pans from critics such as the one linked above then adds:

White House officials argued that some observers have read more into the speech than is there. "The speech was carefully and purposely nuanced," said presidential speechwriter and policy adviser Michael J. Gerson. "We are dealing with a generational struggle. It's not the work of a year or two."

NUANCED??? I thought this administration didn't believe in NUANCE and made fun of it when John Kerry did it?

Presidential advisers also said they were not trying to roll back the speech on the day after, pointing to language in the address that they said made it clear that the goal of ending tyranny would not be accomplished with cookie-cutter policies or unrealistic ambitions. For example, Bush declared that ending tyranny would not be accomplished primarily through armed conflict, and he made distinctions between dealing with outlaw states that actively support terrorism and those whose human rights records may be poor but that have shown a willingness to change.

If they weren't trying to roll back anything, why bother talking to reporters? Why not let it stand as it is since it should speak for itself. More:

The senior administration official pointed to Russia and China as countries that have a "successful relationship" with the United States. But he said Russia and China would need to embrace "a common set of values and principles" to have "a relationship that broadens and deepens."

He said that if Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to take steps to restrict democracy, it will "have a consequence on our relations," adding that "it will depend on some sense whether he has heard the message and acted on it, or doesn't." But he also said that administration concerns might not be voiced publicly, but through private channels.

Oh.But it didn't sound as if Bush was saying the United States would PRIVATELY defend liberty and freedom and PRIVATELY call for it over the world. Or did I miss something?

The official stressed that he was not pulling back from the speech, which he repeatedly called "bold," but he also focused on what he called positive trends in close U.S. allies generally regarded as repressive. He said that Saudi Arabia is taking steps toward municipal elections and is having a "national dialogue" on reform, while Egypt last year held a conference that resulted in a declaration on political reform. "It's a step," he said.

Oh. And this:

Bartlett also differentiated between the inaugural speech and the president's State of the Union address, scheduled for Feb. 2, noting that the next speech will offer a more practical policy blueprint. The inaugural address, he said, was "a speech that required us to cast out into the future a beacon that we will strive to meet."

He's right about that. An INAUGURAL ADDRESS usually lays out basic concepts and values that an administration firmly believes in — unless it insists it's not rolling anything back and has to add on the equivilent of "it all depends on what is is." A STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS is a detailed blueprint where the partisan sparks usually start to fly, with a President outlining his proposals and — depending on the degree of partisanship — his party applauding until the skin drops off their hands and the opposition party slightly touching their palms on specific proposals on which parties disagree.

Here's ANOTHER clarification:

Bush's speech appeared to put the United States on a course in which moralism and idealism, rather than realpolitik, form the philosophical foundations of foreign policy. But White House officials said that is a misreading of how Bush operates. "His goals are deeply idealistic," Gerson said. "His methods are deeply realistic. In fact, that was one of the themes of the speech, that this traditional divide between realism and idealism is no longer adequate for the conduct of American foreign policy."

Another interesting tidbit. According to the Post, the speech was planned with a lot of "input" from a many people:

--George Bush, who wanted a speech about "freedom" and "liberty."

--Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol.

--"One meeting, arranged by Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, included military historian Victor Davis Hanson, columnist Charles Krauthammer and Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis, according to one Republican close to the White House. White House senior adviser Karl Rove attended, according to one source, but mostly listened to what became a lively exchange over U.S. policy and the fight for liberty."

-- "The former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky also helped shape the speech with his book about the hopes of democratic dissidents jailed by despots around the world. Bush recommended the book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror," to several aides and invited Sharansky, now an Israeli politician, to the White House in mid-November to discuss it, according to one official."

So the concept was sound and the ideas pitched around came from thoughtful people who shared a specific point of view.

But something apparently didn't click — because this sounds like one of the biggest rollbacks since New Coke was recalled.

FOOTNOTE: As I've said on my own blog The Moderate Voice, I found the speech....another inaugural speech. I did not (and can't) get as excited as some folks on the left and right.

UPDATE II: Oxblog's David Adesnik traces Bush's inaugural speech to this (although the other guy didn't later on clarify).

UPDATE III: Now George Bush SENIOR is clarifying the speech:

President Bush's inaugural address, with its emphasis on spreading democracy and battling tyranny anywhere in the world, was not meant to signal a new direction in U.S. foreign policy, his father said Saturday.

"People want to read a lot into it that this means new aggression, or newly asserted military forces," former President Bush told reporters during a visit to the White House briefing room. "That's not what that speech is about. It's about freedom."

His father, a seasoned diplomat who was president during the first Iraq war, told reporters that he no longer is up to speed on every detail of foreign relations. Nonetheless, he said, no one should think the president was being arrogant when he spoke of confronting oppressive leaders as a way to protect U.S. security.

"They certainly ought to not read into it any arrogance on the part of the United States," the former president said.

As the old movie line goes: "What we have here is a failure to communicate..."

UPDATE IV: David Adesnik also notes that the speech "was no accident" adding:"Unsuprisingly, accusations of hypocrisy (at home and abroad) began to emerge not long after the inaugural. But the President's critics would be wise not to forget that there is considerable substance to his message."