The moral majority and the 2008 election

Ronald Reagan's film career was already on the wane when he signed a contract with General Electric. It was 1954, and the actor - whose future as a politician, governor and president was still ahead of him - embarked on a series of lectures in company factories. That is how the "speech" was born. Those who heard Reagan of '54 could know it was the same Reagan running for president in 1980. "Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery rather than dare the wilderness?" he asked. And the point was: should we, the Americans, abandon the peoples of eastern Europe to the oppression of Soviet tyranny?

Twenty-five years after that speech, Reagan became president. Then, in his frequently directed simplicity, he dared to attribute to the Soviet Union the title that befitted it: "The Evil Empire."

Another 25 years have since passed, and the candidates for the position Reagan held in the White House still think that there is an abyss separating the U.S. from its enemies, but also its friends: it is more good and moral than any of them.

"The United States today needs to reclaim the moral high ground that defined our foreign policy for much of the last century," said John Edwards, Democratic candidate for the presidency, in an essay published in Foreign Affairs.

A Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, in his contribution to the same journal, offered the following: "To achieve a realistic peace, U.S. diplomacy must be tightly linked to our other strengths: military, economic, and moral."

Another Republican, Mitt Romney, and Democrat Barack Obama, also candidates for the presidency and whose articles were published earlier in the same journal, also believe in the "moral leadership" of America in the world. Not just plain leadership.

The world, as has been shown in countless surveys and polls, is not willing to see in America what its leaders see when they look in the mirror. The book last year by Andrew Kohut of the Pew Center and Bruce Stokes of National Public Radio - "Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked" - illustrated this by relying on extensive data. One of their fascinating conclusions is that the difference between what America believes about itself, and what the rest of the world believes about it, is found in the American tendency to be overly optimistic. As such, they are constantly in danger of ignoring the obstacles in their way, and are willing to believe in their ability to be agents of change.

Giuliani, Edwards, Romney and Obama - like most of the candidates who have not yet written their articles - are all such agents. The political conclusions Edwards draws from his principles have very little in common from those drawn by Giuliani. Nonetheless, their common denominator lies in the fact that even after Iraq - and despite the pile of obstacles that has accumulated in the path of the democratization locomotive that began at the White House with George W. Bush at the controls - America is not retreating, at least publicly, to the cynical realism of the Republican presidents who preceded Reagan (Nixon) and succeeded him (Bush Sr.).

In spite of this situation, the Republican candidates continue to rely on neo-conservative rhetoric, and their Democratic counterparts on neo-liberal arguments. Both groups believe equally that the U.S. should continue to be involved in the affairs of other states, and all assume that it is good for the world if the U.S. influences it.

Attempts to erode this belief have proven to pay poor political dividends. After all, the candidate who opts for a message of disengagement, a withdrawal from the world, will reflect on the U.S. no less than on the world. It would mean that he does not believe in the superiority of the system, and in the morality and leadership of America. What kind of American would want such a president?

In any case, within the policies of the candidates for the presidency lies a seed of patronizing arrogance but also of value. This is the approach Fred Thompson, another Republican candidate, summarized a few days ago: "I don't apologize for the United States of America. This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined." And, if one believes its candidates, this appears to be the way it will continue.