Peggy Noonan

Acrimony, insults, the government shut down. Time to talk to a wise man, someone from the days when government worked. I turned to the famous Mr. Baker—James A. Baker III, U.S secretary of state (1989-92), secretary of the Treasury (1985-88) and White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan (1981-85) and George H.W. Bush (1992-93). He spoke, by phone, from his Houston office at the law firm Baker Botts.

Looking at Washington, “I’m seeing, frankly, a sad situation.” A brief shutdown won’t be terrible—there had already been 17, he notes, since 1976, eight when he was at the White House or Treasury. But the longer this one lasts the more dangerous it will become.

The political problem: The president is failing to lead. His refusal to negotiate with Republicans over spending and the debt limit is “an obstinate position, it’s not a leadership position.” The Republicans made a mistake early on with a “maximalist” position on ObamaCare—they could not realistically achieve their aim of defunding when the Democrats hold the White House and Senate. But the president’s position is a “pretty damn maximalist position itself, and people will say that.”

Presidents, he notes, always negotiate in order to get an increase in the debt limit—it’s their job. “It’s a failure of leadership to say, ‘I’m just gonna sit here while the government remains closed,’ or, with respect to the debt limit, ‘I’ll sit here and not negotiate and the catastrophic consequences I warned you of will just have to happen.’ . . . He has the burden of moving forward. He’s the leader of the country. He has to get the debt limit raised to avoid default.”

Yet the GOP too bears responsibility for the impasse. “I don’t think it was a very wise strategy for we Republicans to say we would not fund the government unless we defunded ObamaCare. I don’t think that’s a smart political strategy, and I think we’ll pay a price for it. . . . If you’re gonna make your stand, make your stand on something you can accomplish.” When he worked for Reagan, he’d come back from a negotiation saying, “I think we can get this,” and it was never all the president wanted. “Reagan would say, ‘I’d rather get 80% of what I want than go over the cliff with my flag flying.'”

Mr. Baker says two GOP-backed changes to ObamaCare hold promise. “House Republicans are not wrong when they say we ought to eliminate the special privileges that members of Congress and their staffs have. . . . That would be tremendously popular in the country.” The public also would support, and Democrats would likely back, eliminating the ObamaCare tax on medical devices.

He returns to the leadership problem: “When a president doesn’t control both sides of Congress he has to deal with the other party. Ronald Reagan did it almost every day with Tip O’Neill.” Nonnegotiation is bad politics. “Suppose we get past this budget debate and Oct. 17 get into a fight on the debt limit. I’m not certain the American people would not penalize the administration.”

What should President Obama do? Own it. Lead. “Leading would be to call [Speaker John] Boehner in: ‘All right, this is a sorry situation for our country. Come on here and let’s talk about resolving it.'” In this negotiation they should first explore an agreement on getting rid of the special provisions for Congress. Second, they could move to come to agreement on eliminating the medical device tax.

“Resolve this thing by getting into a room and making the government work. The leader of our government should be willing to get into a room and sit down with the opposition.”

Why doesn’t Mr. Obama do this? Baker spoke of “obstinacy” and political calculation. “This White House thinks it’s got a bird’s nest on the ground because we Republicans overreached when we said defund ObamaCare.” The president thinks this works for him. “He could turn out to be right, and he could turn out to be wrong.” Democrats “think this is a great political strategy. I’m not sure it is if it continues too long, particularly if it segues into the debt limit and he doesn’t negotiate.” The White House meeting of the president and congressional leaders Wednesday night does not qualify as a negotiation. “They didn’t do anything but parrot their respective positions.”

Ronald Reagan faced a fiercely Democratic house throughout both terms of his presidency. “Those days were bitter, but we got into a room and we thrashed it out. The ‘Gang of Five,’ the ‘Gang of 17’—we worked it out, each side gave a little, and we got the government working. Reagan—as you know, he had the reputation of being a conservative ideologue. But he wasn’t, he was pragmatic.” He worked with the other side and “won them over.” How? “Horse trading, compromise and negotiation made the government work.” Bill Clinton too “was willing to negotiate when he had a body controlled by the opposite party.”

When people speak of Reagan and O’Neill, I said, it always comes across as covered over by nostalgia, as if the two were magical. “Hell no, I’m talking about practicality. Reagan, believe it or not—one reason he was so successful was he was pragmatic. He did what he needed to do to get things done.”

Could Reagan have controlled today’s GOP? “I think yes, he could have. You bet. Yeah, he would have.” How? Baker’s answer seemed to be: Through a personal application of peace through strength. “Somebody asked me about the tea party, ‘Ya think Reagan would have [been at odds with] them or been in sync with them?’ I think, Reagan would have probably led the charge! But remember how it was when he first came in. He understood that we judge our presidents . .  on the basis of what elements of their programs they get accomplished legislatively, how they make the government run, how they lead.”

A sound strategy for the Republicans going forward would involve a shift in public perception. People will see the issue one way when they believe House Republicans are unwilling to pass a budget because of ObamaCare. When people see the issue as the president refusing to negotiate with House Republicans on the issue of the debt limit, things will change. The president’s refusal to negotiate “could change the political calculus, the more so the longer it goes. . . . My political antennae tell me when the debate becomes the failure of our leader to negotiate . . . the mood of the country could flip.” That would look like a true “abdication of leadership.”

Does he worry about how all this is making America look in the world? “Yeah, sure, of course. It makes us look like we don’t have our act together. And I guess you could say we don’t.”

He notes that Mr. Obama used to speak of how he admired Reagan. But Reagan tackled big problems—fundamental tax reform, fixing Social Security. “Why doesn’t he do what Reagan did?”

The world misses the old America, the one before the crash—the crashes—of the past dozen years.

That is the takeaway from conversations the past week in New York, where world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly session. Our friends, and we have many, speak almost poignantly of the dynamism, excellence, exuberance and leadership of the nation they had, for so many years, judged themselves against, been inspired by, attempted to emulate, resented.

As for those who are not America’s friends, some seem still confused, even concussed, by the new power shift. What is their exact place in it? Will it last? Will America come roaring back? Can she? Does she have the political will, the human capital, the old capability?

It is a world in a new kind of flux, one that doesn’t know what to make of America anymore. In part because of our president.

“We want American leadership,” said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.

“In the past we have seen some America overreach,” said the prime minister of a Western democracy, in a conversation. “Now I think we are seeing America underreach.” He was referring not only to foreign policy but to economic policies, to the limits America has imposed on itself. He missed its old economic dynamism, its crazy, pioneering spirit toward wealth creation—the old belief that every American could invent something, get it to market, make a bundle, rise.

The prime minister spoke of a great anxiety and his particular hope. The anxiety: “The biggest risk is not political but social. Wealthy societies with people who think wealth is a given, a birthright—they do not understand that we are in the fight of our lives with countries and nations set on displacing us. Wealth is earned. It is far from being a given. It cannot be taken for granted. The recession reminded us how quickly circumstances can change.” His hope? That the things that made America a giant—”so much entrepreneurialism and vision”—will, in time, fully re-emerge and jolt the country from the doldrums.

The second takeaway of the week has to do with a continued decline in admiration for the American president. Barack Obama’s reputation among his fellow international players has deflated, his stature almost collapsed. In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due, obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of it is connected to the historical moment America is in.

But some of it, surely, is just five years of Mr. Obama. World leaders do not understand what his higher strategic aims are, have doubts about his seriousness and judgment, and read him as unsure and covering up his unsureness with ringing words.

A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. “World leaders are very negative about Obama,” he said. They are “disappointed, feeling he’s not really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don’t pay that much attention to him anymore.”

The diplomat was one of more than a dozen U.S. foreign-policy hands who met this week with the new president of Iran, Hasan Rouhani. What did he think of the American president? “He didn’t mention Obama, not once,” said the former envoy, who added: “We have to accept the fact that the president is rather insignificant at the moment, and rely on our diplomats.” John Kerry, he said, is doing a good job.

Had he ever seen an American president treated as if he were so insignificant? “I really never have. It’s unusual.” What does he make of the president’s strategy: “He doesn’t know what to do so he stays out of it [and] hopes for the best.” The diplomat added: “Slim hope.”

This reminded me of a talk a few weeks ago, with another veteran diplomat who often confers with leaders with whom Mr. Obama meets. I had asked: When Obama enters a room with other leaders, is there a sense that America has entered the room? I mentioned de Gaulle—when he was there, France was there. When Reagan came into a room, people stood: America just walked in. Does Mr. Obama bring that kind of mystique?

“No,” he said. “It’s not like that.”

When the president spoke to the General Assembly, his speech was dignified and had, at certain points, a certain sternness of tone. But after a while, as he spoke, it took on the flavor of re-enactment. He had impressed these men and women once. In the cutaways on C-Span, some delegates in attendance seemed distracted, not alert, not sitting as if they were witnessing something important. One delegate seemed to be scrolling down on a BlackBerry, one rifled through notes. Two officials seated behind the president as he spoke seemed engaged in humorous banter. At the end, the applause was polite, appropriate and brief.

The president spoke of Iran and nuclear weapons—”we should be able to achieve a resolution” of the question. “We are encouraged” by signs of a more moderate course. “I am directing John Kerry to pursue this effort.”

But his spokesmen had suggested the possibility of a brief meeting or handshake between Messrs. Obama and Rouhani. When that didn’t happen there was a sense the American president had been snubbed. For all the world to see.

Which, if you are an American, is embarrassing.

While Mr. Rouhani could not meet with the American president, he did make time for journalists, diplomats and businessmen brought together by the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Early Thursday evening in a hotel ballroom, Mr. Rouhani spoke about U.S.-Iranian relations.

He appears to be intelligent, smooth, and he said all the right things—”moderation and wisdom” will guide his government, “global challenges require collective responses.” He will likely prove a tough negotiator, perhaps a particularly wily one. He is eloquent when speaking of the “haunted” nature of some of his countrymen’s memories when they consider the past 60 years of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Well, we have that in common.

He seemed to use his eloquence to bring a certain freshness, and therefore force, to perceived grievances. That’s one negotiating tactic. He added that we must “rise above petty politics,” and focus on our nations’ common interests and concerns. He called it “counterproductive” to view Iran as a threat; this charge is whipped up by “alarmists.” He vowed again that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb, saying this would be “contrary to Islamic norms.”

I wondered, as he spoke, how he sized up our president. In roughly 90 minutes of a speech followed by questions, he didn’t say, and nobody thought to ask him.

Washington

An accomplished American diplomat once said that there are two templates of American foreign-policy thinking. The first is Munich and the second is Vietnam.

When America does not move militarily as some people wish it to, they say, “This is another Munich”—appeasement that in the end will summon greater violence and broader war. When America moves militarily as some people do not wish it to, they say, “This is Vietnam”—jumping in where we do not belong and cannot win.

This is serviceable as a rough expression of where our foreign policy debates tend to go. But I suspect the past 12 years’ experience in the Mideast has left us with a new template: “It’s Chinatown,” from the classic movie. This is where you try to make it better and somehow make it worse, in spite of your best efforts. This is a place where the biggest consequences are always unintended.

Surely this is part of the reason for the clear and quick public opposition to a U.S. strike in Syria, and it echoed in the attention paid to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s statement this week that such a move “would be throwing gasoline on a very complex fire in the Middle East.”

This week I spoke to a few U.S. senators about the meaning of the Syria drama. They were a mix—some had given supportive soundings early on; all had been taken aback by the public reaction, the wave of calls and emails. There was gossip. Apparently some White House staffers have a new nickname for the president: “Obam-me,” because it’s all about him and his big thoughts. I guess the second-term team is not quite as adoring as the first.

Two senators spoke of their worry about what the Syria mess—the threat, the climb down, the lunge at a lifeline, the face-saving interviews—signaled to the world about U.S. credibility. If an American president says there’s a red line and the red line is crossed, there can be no question: America must act. No one said this but I think I correctly inferred a suggestion that the American people may not be willing right now to appreciate the fact that in a world full of bad guys the indispensable nation must show it is serious.

It seems to me U.S. credibility is a key issue in the Syria drama, but the problem is not that the U.S. public is newly unconcerned with it. The problem is that the public now sees the issue of U.S. credibility very differently from the way many lawmakers understand it.

For weeks I’ve been going back in my mind to a talk I had with a deeply accomplished, America-loving foreign policy expert. He too felt credibility was at issue. He said the other leaders of the world are no longer certain we are a great military power. I started to answer but someone joined us and the conversation turned. But I wanted to say no, the world thinks we are a great military power. They know all about the missiles and tanks and satellites, they’ve seen our soldiers. They know our might. The world is no longer certain we are a great nation, which is a different problem.

The world knows a lot about us, and in ways removed from specific military actions. Their elites come here, and increasingly their middle class. They know our unemployment problem—it’s not a secret. They take the train from New York to Washington and see the abandoned factories. They know about our budget problems, they know who holds our bonds. They read about the kids who are bored so they killed the visiting Australian baseball player, and the kids so bored they killed a World War II veteran. They read about the state legislator who became a hero for defending late-term abortions—they see the fawning interviews. They go home with the story of the guy who spent his time watching violent videos and then, amazingly, acted out his visions of violence at the Washington Navy Yard. They notice our mass killings are no more than two-day stories.

And of course it isn’t only “the world” that sees this—Americans see it. And they are worried about their country. Deep down they, too, wonder if we are still a great nation or will be able to remain one. They think our economy is in a shambles and our government incapable, at the moment, of creating the conditions that will allow it to come back. They fear our culture is rotting our children’s heads.

And so, asked to support a strike that could spark a response that could start a real war they say no, not now and not in Chinatown. But this is not a turning inward, it is not about fortress America. They do not think they are protecting an unsullied beacon of light from the machinations and manipulations of the cynical Old World. They have fewer illusions than their policy makers do!

They are not “armchair isolationists.” If you’ve ever taken a walk in one of our cities or suburbs—if you’ve ever taken a walk in America—you know we have all the people in the world here. You can barely get them off the phone back home with Islamabad, Galway and Lagos. Longtime Americans deal every day, in the office and the neighborhood, with immigrants and others from every culture and country. And so many of the new Americans are trying desperately to adhere to America, to find reasons to adhere. They are not unaware of the larger world. They came from the larger world. They’re trying to love where they are.

They know this place is in need of help and attention. They care about it. That impulse should be encouraged and lauded, not denigrated as narrow-minded or backward. They’re trying to be practical. They’re Americans trying to take stock in their nation and concluding: “We have got to get ourselves in order, we have got to turn our attention to getting stronger. Then we will be fully credible in the world.”

What I am saying is that the old, Washington definition of credibility, which involves the projection of force in pursuit of ends it thinks necessary, and the American people’s definition of credibility, which is to become stronger and allow the world, and the young, to understand you are getting stronger, are at variance. And that will have implications down the road.

The public’s sense of U.S. credibility, and how it is best secured and projected, probably began to vary more broadly from Washington’s when the Great Recession hit home, five years ago this week.

Political leaders have got to start twigging on to this. It’s not as if it just happened. They can argue for any foreign military action they think necessary, but the American people will not be of a mind to support it until they think someone is really trying to clean up America.

A diplomat might say, “But the world will not go on vacation while America gets its act together!” True enough, and that fact will demand real shrewdness from America’s leaders, who in the past few weeks got quite a lesson in how Americans on the ground view American priorities.

He twisted the knife and gloated, which was an odd and self-indulgent thing to do when he was winning. Vladimir Putin, in his essay in the New York Times, may even to some degree have overplayed his hand, though that won’t matter much immediately. As a public posture, grace and patience would have brought him a lot further, impressing people and allowing them to feel some confidence in the idea that he’s seriously trying to offer an actual path out of the Syrian mess. But maybe he doesn’t think he has to win anyone over anymore—and maybe that the real news. In any case, the steely-eyed geopolitical strategist has reminded us that he’s also the media-obsessed operator who plays to his base back home by tranquilizing bears, wrestling alligators and riding horses shirtless, like Yul Brynner in “Taras Bulba.”

Clearly he is looking at President Obama and seeing weakness, lostness, lack of popularity. His essay is intended to exploit this and make some larger points, often sanctimoniously, about how the U.S. should conduct itself in the world. And so he chided American leadership, implicitly challenged its position as world leader, posited the U.N. Security Council, where Russia has done so much mischief, as the only appropriate decision-making body for international military action, and worried the U.N. will “suffer the fate” of the League of Nations if “influential countries” continue to take action without authorization. He does not doubt chemical weapons were used in Syria but doubts it was the government that used them. It was probably the rebels, he asserts, in an attempt to “provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons.”

Still, in general, Mr. Putin made a better case in the piece against a U.S. military strike than the American president has for it. And he did so, in a way, by getting to the left of the president, who he implies is insufficiently respectful to international bodies. Mr. Putin was candid about his primary anxiety—a spillover from Syria that could threaten Russian stability.

The Syrian civil war, he both conceded and cleverly noted for a U.S. audience, is in no way “a battle for democracy.” He made no moral claims for his ally, Bashar Assad. The war, he said, is a battle between government and opposition, with the latter composed of militants and mercenaries including al Qaeda fighters and “extremists of all stripes.” He sees what is happening as a danger to his country. Some of the rebels are from the West, and some from Russia itself. He does not want them returning home with the training they’ve acquired. “This threatens us all,” he said. True enough.

Mr. Putin’s challenge to the idea to American exceptionalism was ignorant and tone-deaf. The president had thrown in a reference to it at the end of his speech. Mr. Putin, in his essay, responded: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” After all, he said, God made us all equal.

My goodness, that argument won’t get you very far in America, and it’s a little worrying that Mr. Putin either wouldn’t know this or wouldn’t care. (Here it must be noted: The Times is reporting Mr. Putin’s essay was placed by an American public-relations firm. Really? This is the kind of work you get from a big ticket, big-time communications outfit? Can’t America even do PR anymore?)

America is not exceptional because it has long attempted to be a force for good in the world, it attempts to be a force for good because it is exceptional. It is a nation formed not by brute, grunting tribes come together over the fire to consolidate their power and expand their land base, but by people who came from many places. They coalesced around not blood lines but ideals, and they defined, delineated and won their political rights in accordance with groundbreaking Western and Enlightenment thought. That was something new in history, and quite exceptional. We fought a war to win our freedom, won it against the early odds, understood we owed much to God, and moved forward as a people attempting to be worthy of what he’d given us.

We had been obliged, and had obligations. If you don’t understand this about America you don’t understand anything.

I don’t know why the idea of American exceptionalism seems to grate so on Mr. Putin. Perhaps he simply misunderstands what is meant by it and takes it to be a reference to American superiority, which it is not. Perhaps it makes him think of who won the Cold War and how. Maybe the whole concept makes him think of what Russia did, almost 100 years ago now, to upend and thwart its own greatness, with a communist revolution that lasted 75 years and whose atheism, a core part of its ideology, attempted to rid his great nation of its faith, and almost succeeded. Maybe it grates on him that in his time some of the stupider Americans have crowed about American exceptionalism a bit too much—and those crowing loudest understood it least.

But I suspect on some level he’s just a little envious of the greatness of America’s beginnings. The Russian Revolution almost killed Russia—they’re still recovering. The American Revolution has been animating us for more than two centuries.

The irony of course is that Mr. Putin used the exceptionalism argument against Mr. Obama, who himself barely believes in the idea and no doubt threw it into his speech the way he often throws things like that in at the end: He thinks Americans like it, that the nationalist ego of the clingers demands it. But he doesn’t mean it. Asked about American exceptionalism once, he said sure he believes in it, just as the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Thank you for that rousing historical endorsement.

After Mr. Putin’s comments, New Jersey’s Sen. Bob Menendez was asked for his response. “I almost wanted to vomit,” he said. This was the best thing Bob Menendez has ever said, and really did sum up U.S. reaction.

*   *   *

A mystery of the Syrian crisis, and the Putin essay, is this. Mr. Putin obviously feels considerable disdain for the president, in spite of what he threw in at the end of his essay—that he and Mr. Obama have a personal and professional relationship marked by “growing trust.” Sure. But I keep thinking of Mr. Obama’s meeting with then-President Dmitry Medvedev in May 2012 and Mr. Obama’s famous hot-mic comment that after the election he would have “more flexibility” and hoped Mr. Putin understood that. Why didn’t Mr. Obama’s promised flexibility earn him any gratitude from Mr. Putin? Why didn’t it earn him Mr. Putin’s discretion, especially at a difficult moment like this?

One thing is certain. Mr. Putin’s essay was not Nikita Krushchev slamming his shoe on the desk at the U.N. and saying, “We will bury you!” Those were bad days. We’ll see, in retrospect, what these days are. It’s not a cold war between the U.S. and Russia, and it’s not a hot one, but there’s a new chill in the air, isn’t there?

It is hard, if you’ve got a head and a heart, to come down against a strong U.S. response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its civilian population. This is especially so if you believe that humanity stands at a door that leads only to darkness. Those who say, “But Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons—the taboo was broken long ago,” are missing the point. When Saddam used gas against the Kurds it was not immediately known to all the world. It was not common knowledge. The world rued it in retrospect. Syria is different: It is the first obvious, undeniable, real-time, YouTubed use of chemical weapons. The whole world knew of it the morning after it happened, through horrified, first-person accounts, from videos of hospital workers and victims’ families.

The world this time cannot “not know,” or claim not to know. And though Bashar Assad has made his pro forma denials, it does not seem believable that this was not a government operation. The rebels may or may not be wicked enough to use such weapons, but it is hard to believe they are capable.

When something like this happens and the world knows and does not respond, you won’t get less of it in the future, you’ll get more. And the weapons will not only be chemical.

So the question: What to do?

After 10 days of debate in Europe and America, the wisest words on a path forward have come from the Pope. Francis wrote this week to Vladimir Putin, as the host of the G-20. He damned “the senseless massacre” unfolding in Syria and pleaded with the leaders gathered in St. Petersburg not to “remain indifferent”—remain—to the “dramatic situation.” He asked the governments of the world “to do everything possible to assure humanitarian assistance” within and without Syria’s borders.

But, he said, a “military solution” is a “futile pursuit.”

And he is right. The only strong response is not a military response.

The world must think—and speak—with stature and seriousness, of the moment we’re in and the darkness on the other side of the door. It must rebuke those who used the weapons, condemn their use, and shun the users. It must do more, in concert—surely we can agree on this—to help Syria’s refugees. It must stand up for civilization.

But a military strike is not the way, and not the way for America.

Francis was speaking, as popes do, on the moral aspects of the situation. In America, practical and political aspects have emerged, and they are pretty clear.

The American people do not support military action. A Reuters-Ipsos poll had support for military action at 20%, Pew at 29%. Members of Congress have been struck, in some cases shocked, by the depth of opposition from their constituents. A great nation cannot go to war—and that’s what a strike on Syria, a sovereign nation, is, an act of war—without some rough unity as to the rightness of the decision. Widespread public opposition is in itself reason not to go forward.

Can the president change minds? Yes, and he’ll try. But it hasn’t worked so far. This thing has jelled earlier than anyone thought. More on that further down.

What are the American people thinking? Probably some variation of: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.

Twelve years of war. A sense that we’re snakebit in the Mideast. Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t go well, Libya is lawless. In Egypt we threw over a friend of 30 years to embrace the future. The future held the Muslim Brotherhood, unrest and a military coup. Americans have grown more hard-eyed—more bottom-line and realistic, less romantic about foreign endeavors, and more concerned about an America whose culture and infrastructure seem to be crumbling around them.

The administration has no discernible strategy. A small, limited strike will look merely symbolic, a face-saving measure. A strong, broad strike opens the possibility that the civil war will end in victory for those as bad as or worse than Assad. And time has already passed. Assad has had a chance to plan his response, and do us the kind of damage to which we would have to respond.

There is the issue of U.S. credibility. We speak of this constantly and in public, which has the effect of reducing its power. If we bomb Syria, will the world say, “Oh, how credible America is!” or will they say, “They just bombed people because they think they have to prove they’re credible”?

We are, and everyone knows we are, the most militarily powerful and technologically able nation on earth. And at the end of the day America is America. We don’t have to bow to the claim that if we don’t attack Syria we are over as a great power.

Are North Korea and Iran watching? Sure. They’ll always be watching. And no, they won’t say, “Huh, that settles it, if America didn’t move against Syria they’ll never move against us. All our worries are over.” In fact their worries, and ours, will continue.

Sometimes it shows strength to hold your fire. All my life people have been saying we’ve got to demonstrate our credibility—that if we, and the world, don’t know we are powerful by now we, and they, will never know.

Finally, this president showed determination and guts in getting Osama bin Laden. But a Syria strike may become full-scale war. Is Barack Obama a war president? On Syria he has done nothing to inspire confidence. Up to the moment of decision, and even past it, he has seemed ambivalent, confused, unaware of the implications of his words and stands. From the “red line” comment to the “shot across the bow,” from the White House leaks about the nature and limits of a planned strike to the president’s recent, desperate inclusion of Congress, he has seemed consistently over his head. I have been thinking of the iconic image of American military leadership, Emanuel Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” There Washington stands, sturdy and resolute, looking toward the enemy on the opposite shore. If you imagine Mr. Obama in that moment he is turned, gesturing toward those in the back. “It’s not my fault we’re in this boat!” That’s what “I didn’t set a red line” and “My credibility is not at stake” sounded like.

And looked like.

[dingbats]

A point on how quickly public opinion has jelled. There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus. The Syria debate isn’t, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That’s not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington’s central governing assumptions.

I’ve been thinking of the “wise men,” the foreign policy mandarins of the 1950s and ’60s, who so often and frustratingly counseled moderation, while a more passionate public, on right and left, was looking for action. “Ban the Bomb!” “Get Castro Out of Cuba.”

In the Syria argument, the moderating influence is the public, which doesn’t seem to have even basic confidence in Washington’s higher wisdom.

That would be a comment on more than Iraq. That would be a comment on the past five years, too.