Former President George W. Bush can properly be called to account for misjudgment and blunders, chiefly, perhaps, the superb confidence with which he plunged into Iraq. There is one thing, nevertheless, that should be said of Bush -- a laudable thing. Even when wrong, or just off base, or insufficiently mindful of great complexities, he sought the safety of the American people. He took a high view -- in other words, of the president's constitutional role as commander in chief and of his corollary duty, less specifically spelled out -- to keep the American people secure and free.
One wouldn't argue for the splendor, any more than for the success, of his every foreign policy move. One might argue merely that the proper grounds on which to judge the foreign policy stewardship of Barack Obama are these same essential grounds: Not, did he please Europe and Russia and reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Not even, did he heal the Israeli-Palestinian divide? Did he keep us safe and free? That will be the question. No larger question underlies, say, the conundrum of the Iranian nuclear challenge, or the matter of what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan and for how long.
It's certainly about our "image" in the world, this foreign policy stuff. But images are of value only so far as they work to effect respect, coupled with healthy fear in the basest circles, when the United States comes to mind.
Obama talks relatively little about freedom. It's the major gap in his, I'm afraid, overpraised ability to read his speeches on electronic devices. He'll have better fortune as leader of the free world -- the unofficial title of the American president -- when he talks about freedom itself with the same warmth and zeal he seems to reserve for those new chapters supposedly just ahead in the book of international cooperation.