Radioactive

There's so much going on in American politics today, that lost in the shuffle is the fact that the second-most-powerful man in the universe is being forced to ride off into the sunset:

Prime Minister Tony Blair, his reputation in Britain badly damaged by his refusal to break ranks with President Bush, gave in Thursday to a fierce revolt in his Labour Party and reluctantly promised to quit within a year.

Blair, whose popularity began sinking when he committed his nation to the U.S.-led war in Iraq three years ago, had long resisted calls to publicly set a timeframe for his departure from office. He feared such an announcement would make him a lame duck and sap his remaining authority.

But ultimately, the foreign leader best known to Americans could find no other way to end days of public turmoil that were severely damaging Labour, which has been in power for nearly a decade but now trails the opposition Conservatives in the polls.

I like how he's hewing to the Bush line of refusing to call for a timetable because that would embolden his political enemies. In fact, the walk of shame Blair will have to endure for a year is a direct result of his closeness to our President:

Long derided by critics as the U.S. president's "poodle," he suffered a further blow at July's G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. An open microphone caught a chat in which he seemed embarrassingly subservient to Bush, who greeted him by shouting "Yo, Blair!"

Anger over his handling of this summer's Mideast fighting and anxiety over the party's slide in the polls fueled the rank-and-file's impatience for him to leave quickly, or at least to say when he planned to go. Blair's refusal to call for an early end to the Israel-Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon was the final provocation for many once-loyal supporters.

It served as yet another reminder of his close alliance with Bush — a friendship widely detested within the Labour Party — and stirred bitter memories of Blair's decision to commit Britain to the Iraq war despite intense public opposition.

Blair can now join Aznar in Spain and Berlusconi in Italy, other European leaders who paid the price for their relationship to Bush. And yesterday's revelation that there were indeed secret CIA prisons, presumably in Europe, is not going to help America's public image on the continent. BooMan considers this in a well-written post about the downfall of American exceptionalism:

Bushism is a spectacular failure, but it could not have been so all-encompassing if it had not jettisoned the aspects of U.S. foreign policy that made our hegemony palatable to the greater world community. The biggest failures have not been military, but diplomatic. The adandoment of the Kyoto process, the tearing up of the ABM treaty, and the total neglect of the peace process in Palestine are among the most glaring policy errors. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, torture, fishy elections, and increased police powers have all contributed to knocking out the pillars that allowed American Exceptionalism to operate with a good deal of good-will and support.

What we are left with is the dark side of American foreign policy (intervention, coups, support for tyrants and death squads, general neglect of human rights) without the light side (internationalism, collective security, support for democratization and self-determination, and support for human rights). With each passing day, the validity of traditional Marxist, non-aligned, third world, and Islamist critiques is increased.

The GOP response to this is to call such critiques anti-American, foreign propaganda, and to ratchet up the fear factor. This cannot stand.

Either America returns to its former policies that formed the basis for the legitimacy of American Exceptionalism (and does a better job), or the whole international system will re-align on us, with ugly and unpredictable consequences for our nation, our allies, and the world economy.

I think this is very right, and very serious. No country on Earth is going to be perfect, given the push and pull between acting as an enlightened democracy and acting within your country's self-interest. But there must be balance, or else we give those who are predisposed to blame America anyway a good reason to do so.