Who's Presumptuous Now?
Kent GreenfieldKent Greenfield is a professor at Boston College Law School. This story is crossposted at the Huffington Post. Click over and Digg his story!
Barack Obama caught flak a few weeks back when he traveled to the Middle East and Europe. Apparently, he was just too presidential. After eight years of George Bush, that wasn’t too hard. He refrained from giving neck rubs to European heads of state and had the audacity to give speeches in which the sentences achieved subject - verb agreement.
How dare he go overseas and not produce a collective cringe from those of us back home? Who does he think he is?
But Obama never purported to speak for the United States in the middle of an international crisis, which is now what John McCain has done.
The international hot spot of the moment is Georgia, where Russian troops continue on the offensive. It’s a complicated and perilous situation, with innocent civilians in danger and regional stability at risk.
John McCain has waded into the situation with both feet, and not only on his own behalf. Apparently McCain telephoned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday, and, according to McCain himself, told him “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians.” McCain told supporters at a campaign event that Saakashvili “wanted me to say thank you to you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people.”
It’s fine and good for the presidential candidates to express support for one side or the other, or to issue calls for restraint, or to express solidarity with the innocent civilians who are at risk.
But it strikes me as presumptuous indeed for McCain to telephone the president of one of the warring nations and to purport to speak for the American people, especially when McCain’s statement seems to promise something serious. What exactly does “we are all Georgians” mean? I don’t know, but McCain thinks he can speak for all of us in promising it. It’s as if McCain is running a shadow State Department out of the Straight Talk Express.
Saakashvili called McCain’s bluff on Wednesday, saying on CNN: “Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now.’ Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”
This is dangerous stuff. We have a president of a warring nation responding to McCain’s comments as if the Republican nominee is setting policy for the nation, and asking us to back up the straight talk with substance.
Doesn’t anyone else think it’s odd that John McCain is the one who seems to be speaking for the United States at the moment? Isn’t that the epitome of presumptuousness?
Reader Comments (1)
KG,
McCain's comment does not strike me as presumptuous - it strikes me as presidential. So what if a foreign leader is reacting to McCain's quote as if he is setting US policy? I, for one, am happy McCain is standing up for Georgians and democracy against the Russians, given Bush's incompetence in the area.
As an Obama supporter, I wish Obama would show some guts and stand up to the Russians.
The criticism of Obama does not stem from, in my view, his commenting on foreign policy. It comes from his premature "victory lap" around the world. Meeting with foreign heads of state, and particularly, giving speeches in Berlin in front of a million Germans, are actions typically reserved for our elected chief executives.
McCain's posturing does not usurp the president's role. It is natural for presidential nominees to comment on foreign policy. In fact, I would be disappointed and less likely to vote for a candidate if he did not express his view on the situation in the Caucasus and offer a potential solution to the conflict -- this is what is expected from a Commander-in-Chief (and CiC wannabe). And this is McCain's metier -- foreign policy, having served with valor in the military and been a member of Senate Armed Services for three decades. As I said before, given Bush's incompetence, it's nice to see someone is looking out for America's (and democracy's) interests.