Strange but true: Clinton has become a foreign-policy president. The man who was once dismissed by some as a bungler is now convinced that foreign policy will, at the very least, not hurt his chances in November’s election. Though the Middle East remains a thicket which can scratch the reputation of any president, Clinton’s team can point to a set of foreign-policy successes, like last week’s important trip to Korea, Japan and Russia. Those who were once among Clinton’s severest critics acknowledge that Bob Dole no longer has the luxury of comparing his wisdom and experience with a callow incumbent. “There are dramatic differences if you compare Clinton in 1993 and Dole in 1997,” says Richard Haass, who was on the staff of George Bush’s National Security Council. “But the differences are not as great when you compare Clinton in ‘96 and Dole in ‘97.”
How did this happen? In part, because of confidence–not just the nation’s in Clinton, but Clinton’s in himself. He has learned to be comfortable with his role as commander in chief and to articulate that comfort. Asked by an interviewer how he could send young Americans into Bosnia without having served in the armed forces himself, Clinton replied: “Because I’m the president, and it’s my job to make those decisions.”
The turning point in Clinton’s foreign-policy fortunes, administration officials agree, was the September 1994 decision to deploy troops to Haiti. The “intervasion” firmed up a crucial partnership between Clinton and Gen. John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On the afternoon of the deployment, the general said he’d have to wait a day if he didn’t order troops into the air in 20 minutes. “Pack ’em,” said Clinton to Shalikashvili. “You could feel them mesh,” says someone who was in the room.
Clinton’s bond with the chairman matters. As all presidents find out sooner or later, the armed forces can do things: force a junta out of Haiti,convince the Bosnian Muslims that it’s safe to sign a peace agreement. But the unlikely marriage between Clinton and the armed forces has potential costs. One personnel carrier blown up by a land mine in Bosnia could severely damage Clinton’s re-election chances. Dole, whose very physical appearance is evidence that he knows what combat is all about, would have a field day insisting that he wouldn’t risk boys’ lives in such a way.
Absent such a catastrophe, however, Clinton has little to fear from Dole on foreign policy. Both men, says Dimitri Simes of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, are “pragmatists and internationalists; neither one is trulya foreign-policy visionary.” Dole’s positions, over the years, have been much closer to those that Clinton now holds than to the increasingly shrill isolationist wing of the Republican Party. Granted, voters may yet decide, as one Clinton adviser says, to “go back to a comforting and simpler time”–in which case they may think that Dole is the man to take them there. But in Clinton’s camp, there’s a real sense that, come the election, foreign policy will be no worse than a wash. And given where he was in 1993, for Clinton, a wash is a win.
