Cicero at Winds of Change passes along a link from Andrew Sullivan to a speech by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Like Sullivan, Cicero is quite taken by Blair, at least as reflected by his rhetoric:

We only win people to [our] positions if our policy is not just about interests but about values, not just about what is necessary but about what is right.

Which brings me to my final reflection about US policy. My advice is: always be in the lead, always at the forefront, always engaged in building alliances, in reaching out, in showing that whereas unilateral action can never be ruled out, it is not the preference.

Cicero wishes Blair were his President. Here’s how Sullivan responds:

Blair is calling for a "complete renaissance" of our war on Islamist terror. He fuses the best insights of the right and left in a strategy that makes sense for the West as a whole. We must be unrelenting in hunting down the enemy - but we must never abandon our ideals and values in the process. We must aggressively move toward a low-carbon economy. We must redouble our efforts for an Israel-Palestine settlement, however daunting the prospects. We have to be confident in our own way of life, and refuse to engage in the masochism of the far left. This may be the Fulton, Missouri, speech of our day. I sure hope it is. All we need now is a Truman.

Quite remarkable, considering that the only evidence against a conclusion that the US has already “fused the best insights of the right and left,” is the incessant carping from a hostile (and left leaning) media establishment and Opposition Party. I suppose, since everyone says the US is unilateral, dismissive of human rights, and imperial minded, why, we must be. Gosh, the world just can’t stand our President, or for that matter that rude and mouthy UN Ambassador Bolton.

What is our Foreign Policy but an assertive combination of the best qualities of the historic high water marks of the left and right sides of our politics?

Our foreign policy fights tyranny, terrorism, and the deprivations of autocracy, and we are the leading financier of altruistic efforts all over the world. We save Muslims, we treat our enemies as we would wish to be treated, we absorb all manner of mistreatment, abuse, and criticism, and only in the mildest terms offer objection or attempt to suggest that our adversaries consider a more peaceful way.

We carry the values of diversity and civil rights and the principles of our founding into every aspect of international affairs. We hold ourselves to the higher standard, and Americans are the first to call foul when Americans stray into wrong. American military misdeeds are first reported to military authorities by military men and women, because they live our values. They then suffer in silence the indignities then foisted upon us by both domestic and international, hate-filled media.

We rarely fight our enemies militarily, and only when provoked by 9/11 or the perceived threat posed by the emergence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rogue nations. We even refrain from entirely warranted military responses, when such might endanger our allies or risk grave collateral damage. Kim Jong-Il still breathes free.

I love the man to death for his courageous stand with President Bush on Iraq, but Blair is either naive or playing to a hostile press.

The US constantly acts on the basis of our values, often to our detriment and against a wall of ignorance, hypocrisy, envy and even hatred.

We always approach situations and problems with evenhandedness, even bending over backwards to give what amount to enemies the benefit of the doubt. We have saved and protected more Muslims in the world than any other nation, we respect the will and interests of our enemy's populations vastly more than their own governments, and we are reviled.

We take the lead, both financially and with heavy lifting, on almost every front imaginable, and it's never enough. That's why we as a people are entirely ready to tell the rest of the world to go to h*ll.

We have moral purpose. We try at all times to act justly. But we do so in a world dominated by the amoral if not immoral leaders of non-democratic nations.

Can PM Blair seriously believe that the "Regional" powers he mentions will be swayed to see the light and work cooperatively and justly and morally and beneficently, if we are only more just or true to our values? What's been stopping them thus far? What hope is there they will want to in the future? I might give India a pass, but Russia or China?

That is the folly of all follies.

God bless him for his courage to date, but Blair is just mugging it up for the cheap seats. He can't possibly be that naive.

One last point. What Blair and his many admirers are really saying with all this is, they really want another Bill Clinton. He's got all those virtuous qualities in his speech, demeanor, and public character. Quite unlike his successor, right?

Mark well what that brought us the last time. Well might we remember the siren song of the charismatic, and what evil was afoot all the while the Emperor of Empathy had his way.

As I recall it, the world hated and mistrusted us then, too. It is only in hindsight that we think somehow they were more fond…