Weekly Standard

Perhaps President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize will spur a sudden global outpouring of love and affection for the United States, but the American Political Science Association (APSA) thinks our image problem runs deeper: Its 20-member blue chip task force (minus two dissenters) has concluded that U.S. standing in the world is in trouble. Chaired by Jeffrey Legro of the University of Virginia, the task force issued a report last month that traces broad declines in the willingness of people around the globe to express positive views of the United States, the willingness of governments to side with the United States, and the degree of satisfaction among Americans themselves with the U.S. position in the world. The report’s findings will be depressing to anyone who would like the United States to be well-thought-of. What to do about that problem, however, is a question on which the report is not especially illuminating. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Since there is so little of it, let’s start with the good news about the release from prison and triumphant return to Libya of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the terrorist who was supposedly serving a life sentence in a Scottish prison for his role in blowing Pan Am 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.

The good news is that many Scots, including members of parliament, were genuinely outraged by the decision of Scotland’s cabinet secretary for justice, Kenny MacAskill, to grant “compassionate release” to Megrahi, who has cancer. The same is true of Brits in general. The local press in Edinburgh and London has been chock-full of denunciation of the move and speculation about who knew and said what and when, as well as what the real motive might have been. It looks like there’s an excellent chance MacAskill’s political career is over, and if Gordon Brown needed another nail in the coffin of his effort to remain Britain’s prime minister past next June, this was one. Two cheers for righteous indignation. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Warsaw

The Obama administration has hit more than a few reset buttons since taking office. In the case of the Islamic world, resetting has meant respectful outreach exemplified in Obama’s Cairo speech. With China, resetting means minimizing the American hectoring on human rights and conspicuous displays of antagonism toward Beijing such as a meeting for the Dalai Lama with the American president. The effort to reset Israel-Palestine, now itself reset, entailed early pressure on Israel to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank. In Iran, the reset was an offer of carrots–up to normalization of relations in exchange for an end to Iran’s ambition to acquire a nuclear weapon. And, of course, the biggest reset of all has been with Russia, where the administration has sought to de-ideologize relations for the sake of arms-control agreements and future help with Iran. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

Historians looking back on these tumultuous times will no doubt argue over the precise date on which the Age of Palin began. Her speech at the Republican National Convention on September 3 certainly catapulted her to national renown. But there is a good case to be made for her introductory appearance in Dayton, Ohio, five days before.

It’s all there: You have the same poise and panache Palin exhibited at the convention. You have the self-assurance of a champion high-school athlete who went on to bigger and better things (unlike in the gloomy Democratic, Bruce Springsteen version of life, in which it’s all downhill after your Glory Days). There’s the ability to deliver a barb with a smile. And above all, that day inaugurated arguably the most incoherent and blubbering partisan response to a candidate in the history of American politics–against which the charms of the candidate stood out even more clearly. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

“In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.” Think about it: Could there be a pithier way of making the point that if you don’t own something and have no stake in its long-term future, you’re not going to take care of it the same way you would if it was yours? It’s suitable both for New York Times columns by Tom Friedman (he’s quoted it many times, usually attributing it to Harvard’s Larry Summers) and for toastmasters the world around (you can find it on the “Stories for Speakers and Writers” blog, where it’s sourced to former Microsoft executive John Wood, quoting Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter).

I got to thinking about it the other day when I got back from the carwash with my rented car. Continue reading →

The sequence of events leading to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, per media reports, goes like this: White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten sends out a directive to senior Bush officials telling them that if they are not planning to stay until the end of the administration, January 2009, then they need to depart by September of this year. Gonzales, under siege from Democrats in Congress over his handling of the firing of U.S. attorneys and his role in wiretapping and other national security hot-button issues, decides he can’t promise to go the distance and announces he is leaving. His friend and patron the president seizes the occasion to denounce the AG’s critics, railing against “months of unfair treatment” of Gonzales, his “good name . . . dragged through the mud for political reasons.” Continue reading →