What goes around ...

The year is 2010 and the Liberal, Democratic President is doing quite well. Although Jihadist terror remains a threat, there have been no significant terrorist events inside the USA. Europe continues its downward slide toward appeasement and capitulation to a growing Moslem minority. Iran is said to be three years away from its first nuclear weapon test, but the MSM reports “promising signs” in the on-going negotiations, conducted under the auspices of the UN.

The President’s main agenda, to the joy of most of the citizenry, is “energy independence.” The President has taken a hard line with ME oil producers, and is working on a coalition with China, India, Japan, Brazil, and selected EU countries, to spend 1 trillion dollars to develop technologies that will lead to a 10 year multinational project to develop and deploy alternative fuels and sources , leading to complete energy (oil) independence for all parties by 2018.

But trouble is brewing. A group of powerful Republican lawmakers (said to be funded by “Big Oil”) have decided that the administration’s foreign policy initiatives in this area are all wrong. They have decided to conduct their own foreign policy visits to China, India, Japan, Brazil, and selected EU countries, working to undermine the Democratic President’s initiative and continue our dependence on oil. When asked why they have chosen to violate a long-standing tradition that holds the President as the key manager of foreign policy, they argue that a precedent for breaking that tradition was established little more than 3 years earlier.

How would you respond to their efforts?

I thought so.

The precedent that the fictitious Republican legislators were referring is happening right now—Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided that a Democratic foreign policy visit to Syria is appropriate. The problem isn’t that she’s undermining the current President, she’s undermining precedent. And for what? Political grandstanding? Thomas Sowell comments:

But whatever passing damage is being done to George W. Bush is a relatively minor concern compared to the lasting damage that is being done to the presidency as an institution that will still be here when George W. Bush is gone.

Once it becomes accepted that it is all right to violate both the laws and the traditions of this nation, and to undermine the ability of the United States to speak to other nations of the world with one voice, we will have taken another fateful step downward into the degeneration of this society.

There is one constant in US politics – what goes around, comes around. If the Democrats insist on undermining a Republican President’s foreign policy (regardless of how ill-conceived it is), you can bet your life that the Republicans will do the same when roles are reversed, and at the first viable opportunity.

If you didn’t like Republican meddling in my fictitious narrative, why is it that the Speaker’s road trip is any different? In these dangerous times, we, as a country, need to present a united front, one voice, at least at the foreign policy level. If we don’t, a precedent of multiple voices will be set, and it will come around to haunt the next Democratic President.

Update: (4/5/07):

Even the Washington Post , no enemy of Democrats and a consistent champion of Liberal ideals, expressed distain for Polosi’s field trip in an editorial today:

“We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush’s military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi’s attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.