When President Bush attacked presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama before the Israeli Knesset for his determination to engage America’s enemies, he triggered a fierce response from Democrats. The responses ranged from outrage at the President’s willingness to use foreign policy as a political cudgel beyond the waters edge to substantive disagreement based on the President’s foreign policy failures in the Middle East and beyond. What was missing from the early rounds of this political battle was a recognition that the President was attacking both Obama’s foreign policy and, to a large degree, his own.

Despite the President’s rhetoric and an understandable tendency to view his approach to diplomacy through the prism of Iraq, a more considered analysis of his record illustrates a significant contradiction between the President’s own language, including the recent speech in Israel, and his administration’s record.

Consider that at the very time Mr. Bush was speaking to the Knesset, his Special Advisor to Sudan, Richard Williamson, was preparing to travel to Geneva for normalization discussions with the Sudanese government, a regime that has been accused of genocide in Darfur and of acting as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The President did not seem to grasp the inconsistency of criticizing diplomacy while sending his envoy to meet with the Sudanese with the intent to end the Darfur genocide through diplomacy.

Mr. Williamson’s efforts, which have raised the hopes among many of the U.S. groups seeking to end the killing in Darfur is only the latest in a long line of situations where a President desirous of self-caricature as a cowboy, has shown a willingness to engage rogue regimes.

The Bush administration successfully practiced quiet diplomacy with the Libyan government of Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi over a four-year period, leading to the normalization of relations with a country that had spent a number of years on the state sponsors of terrorism list. Issues ranging from terrorism to weapons of mass destruction were negotiated by the U.S. State Department.

The State Department has also taken the lead in negotiations with the human rights abusing regime of Kim Jong-il, and has held out the carrot of normal relations if critical issues in the nuclear weapons and terror arena are resolved.

Furthermore, even as the President was wading into the election debate, his own Defense Secretary was engaged in discussions with Iran. Mr. Gates was appointed to replace the flawed Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, in part, because of his role in the Iraq Study Group. At his confirmation hearing Mr. Gates’ noted that:

“[Regarding] any problems that we have with Iran, our first option should be diplomacy and working with our allies to try and deal with the problems that Iran is posing to us. Military conflict with Iran could be quite dramatic. And therefore, I would counsel against military action, except as a last resort and if we felt that our vital interests were threatened….”

The significant gap between the rhetoric used by President Bush and the reality of his administration’s actions should not be a surprise. The administration is staffed with professionals such as Gates who are committed to securing the U.S. national interest. These individuals are able to carry out important work in the shadows well away from the political glare. Unfortunately they have to do so without the benefit of the President’s bully pulpit; the President seems comfortable with his officials using diplomacy but, for political reasons, he does not want to support such efforts publicly.

The problem with such a divide is that it forces America’s best diplomats, individuals such as chief North Korea advisor Christopher Hill, to work with one hand tied behind their back.

And that seems to be the core of the argument between the President and Senator Obama. The President seems willing to limit White House support for American diplomatic efforts in order to ensure that he is perceived domestically, for political purposes, to be a unilateralist.

In complete contrast, Senator Obama seems to believe that the U.S. President must use the White House to drive diplomatic initiatives because it is good policy. The presumptive Democratic nominee is of course betting that the American public rewards him for his smart policy in the political arena; ironically the man he is looking to replace seems intent on highlighting his mistakes and hiding his successes.

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