Bush channels Reagan on foreign policy

With his first major speech, the GOP front-runner sought to put a string of gaffes behind him.

By Mark Dennis

Nov 20, 1999 | George W. Bush sure looked comfortable striding to the front of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library auditorium as the audience rose in applause. He sat serenely as former Secretary of State George Shultz sang the praises of Nancy Reagan, who was in the audience, and Ronald, who was not. And, along with much of the audience, he smiled as Shultz repeated, with a crescendo in his voice and a swing in his arm, Reagan's most famous sound bite on global affairs: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall."

Indeed, if you didn't know better observing the gathering of several hundred in the hilly scrub land north of Los Angeles, you'd think it was a 10th anniversary gala of fin de siecle cold warriors celebrating the defeat of communism. And there's good reason the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president felt at home in such a setting. After all, his father, first as vice president and later as president, was at the center of that steadfast neo-realist policy. And he had gathered some of the period's leading officials, from Shultz to Condoleezza Rice, to tutor him on that trickiest (especially given his string of recent flubs) of subjects: foreign affairs.

In his first major policy speech, Bush spoke Friday at the library about a foreign policy designed to take America into a changing world. Funny thing is, if we are to believe his speech, not so much has changed since Shultz et al left Washington at the end of the Cold War. In a powerful address full of broad brush strokes evoking American power and strength of character, the Texas governor outlined a foreign policy that harks back a generation, to when his father was an ambassador and he was in grad school at Harvard.

Backward looking or not, it was a solid speech, and Bush needed it. In a campaign so far characterized by a platform with few planks, the Texas governor has been accused of trying to slide into the nomination on his massive war chest. And he's received a slew of bad publicity over his foreign affairs gaffes in particular.

He confused Slovakia with Slovenia and called Greeks "Grecians." In his most famous slip, Bush was ambushed earlier this month by a Boston television reporter, who challenged him to name the leaders of Chechnya, Pakistan, India and Taiwan. He only got Taiwan correct. His advisors no doubt hoped Friday's address will erase such mistakes from the public conscience.

Those advisors include many veterans of the Reagan/Bush years. In Condoleeza Rice, a National Security Council member under his father and Stanford professor, Bush has a respected and, just as vital, telegenic senior advisor who happens to be African-American (his media handlers made sure she was available to the press, and especially the television cameras, both before and after the speech, although Bush himself, notably, was not.)

In the world according to Bush, the United States' core concerns are Russia, China and nukes. And hanging over it all like a dark umbrella the notion that the world is a dangerous place, and America must look out for its interests first. After the requisite salutations to the Reagans, Bush came out with this pessimistic zinger: "Even in this time of pride and promise, America has determined enemies, who hate our values and resent our success; terrorists and crime syndicates and drug cartels and unbalanced dictators. The Empire has passed, but evil remains." Sounds almost Reaganesque.

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