Anne-Marie’s book is written from the heart as well as the head. That is to be commended in itself. I had a preview of how inspiring her message can be at a panel we did together at Duke in Fall 2005. Her arguments and the conviction with which she makes them resonated quite powerfully with the students and others there. Clearly lots of people do believe that values matter and are looking for a sense of what is, has been and could be again right about America and our role in the world.

Two questions on my mind as I wrestle with these challenges:

Even leaving the Bush foreign policy out of it, just how consistent has our foreign policy been with its espoused values? Cold War foreign policy comes out mostly yes in the European theatre, but mostly no in the Third World. Not perfect viz Eastern Europe (Hungary 1956, for example), but we truly did do a huge amount to ultimately help establish freedom and democracy there. The Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels are testimony to such. But for so much of the Cold War in so much of the Third World we opted for an “ABC” definition of democracy – “anybody but communists.” And in that grouping we lumped many a nationalist and moderate socialist.

A tough but overall fair perspective on this is in The Global Cold War (2006 Bancroft Prize winner) by Professor Arne Westad, a Norwegian historian who is on the faculty at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Among other things one gets a sense for how many of the threats and problems in today’s world come from so-called Cold War Third World successes (e.g., Afghanistan, Zaire-Congo) as well as failures (Iran, Pakistan) --- and in all of which democratic values were hard to find in US policy Democratic and Republican alike.

Going back further in history I do come out similar to David Rieff on U.S.-Latin American relations. The numerous military interventions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries including many by Woodrow Wilson, the Panama Canal “stole it fair and square”, and other examples give pause.

Overall the United States may well be truer to democratic values than other major powers are and have been, but the judgment is much less about whether we do better than others than whether we live up to the claims we make for ourselves. The standard is not purity: choices always have to be made among priorities, and the perfect can’t become the enemy of the good. But the greater the claimed centrality of democracy as a criterion and value, the greater the expectation generated that this will be manifested in actual policy choices and priorities.

A second question is over the universality of our values and how much of a model the particular approach to democracy that we embody is for others? Yes, we stand for self-government, rule of law, and individual liberty. When juxtaposed against tyranny and repression, these most surely have universality. But our own particular version of democracy is structured according to the principle of “that government is best which governs least.” That principle reflects our history and the principal motivations of our Founders. But for countries with mass poverty, endemic injustice, and other pressing human needs --- that is to say, much of the world today --- political legitimacy is dependent on performance not just process; i.e., whether government is addressing fundamental issues of societal equity and justice. For them that government is best which governs best. This does not include a Pinochet, no matter how high the economic growth rates: there is nothing good about governance that repressive. But it does mean that democracy cannot just be about freedom from; it also has to be about the capacity to.

One can see why the American model is not as attractive as we may think. Some of it is Bush-induced (no need to delineate for TPM readers). But much runs deeper as a philosophy of the role of government in society. And in terms of policy manifestations in today´s world, how much of a model are we? A health care system which spends more but gets less overall while also leaving many more out --- for which responsibility is not just bipartisan but systemic. The choke-hold of powerful interest groups as with politicians of both parties still dancing around gun control even in the wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. Indeed the whole “K Street” culture cultivated by both parties and both branches gives lobbying a pervasiveness that makes the motto of “by, of and for the people” less and less credible. K Street was not what Alexis de Tocqueville had in mind in praising associations. It was, though, what James Madison warned about in Federalist #10 on the dangers of “factions.” And as our campaign consultants have been taking their mastery of political manipulation global , we see much emulation. But admiration? The corrosiveness of our public discourse, from the culture wars to the Iraq war in which dissent is equated with disloyalty, spews forth vitriol more than it models democratic vibrancy.

None of these are policies and practices that Anne-Marie defends. Many are ones she argues to change. But their scope and depth are part of why I see some validity but also lots of questions in our claim to universality. So thanks to The Idea That Is America for helpfully spurring two debates. How important are values to American foreign policy and to our role in the world? Not the simplistic realism-idealism debate that has ebbed and waned in reaction to neo-conservatism, but one more rooted in the complexity of drivers of foreign policy and society writ large as Anne-Marie’s treatment is. And to the extent that values are important, as I agree that they are, how much of an asset are they to American foreign policy going forward? I think they can be but see the key to our providing an inspiring and embracing vision as acknowledging our own struggles with core values (Bush years but also historically) and re-thinking some of them to better fit a global age, for us as well as for others.