After President Obama delivered his speech in Cairo last week, some skeptics complained that he didn’t speak clearly enough about the importance of democracy in U.S. foreign policy. Of course, any such message would have been undermined by the mere fact of the United States’ decades long support for an undemocratic government in Egypt, and an even less democratic one in Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, the irony of delivering a speech in Cairo, and of Obama’s visit to Riyadh a day earlier, would have been too rich for most commentators to ignore. (For precisely this reason, several commentators both here and elsewhere questioned Obama’s choice of Egypt as a venue for his speech in the first place).

But the cognitive dissonance of those who would have the U.S. government actively promote democracy around the world, and who would have the President of the United States speak openly of his desire to overturn the established political order in dozens of places around the world, goes deeper still. Bush apparently never figured out that full-throated American support for would-be reformers often undermined their standing in the eyes of voters. Under the pro-democracy Bush, the relatively more pro-American politicians in, for example, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq, and, Lebanon, all fared poorly.

Bush speeches were often marked by sweeping assertions and moral clarity. Obama, however, is the master of subtlety. He mentioned neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah in his Cairo speech. Likewise, the name “Ahmadinejad” never passed his lips, and yet, when the president accurately characterized Holocaust denial as “baseless”, “ignorant”, “hateful” the obvious mental image in the minds of hundreds of millions of listeners was of a certain skinny, bearded man in a Members Only jacket, arguably the most famous Holocaust denier in the world.

Now, some have declared the United States the clear winner of the election in Lebanon, and have singled out Obama’s speech as crucial to the equation. This past weekend, Lebanese votes dealt a clear setback to Hezbollah and its Christian Maronite ally, Michael Aoun, and handed power to a diverse coalition under the leadership of Saad Hariri, son of the late-Rafiq Hariri, the multibillionaire and former prime minister whose killing in 2005 prompted a series of protests (beginning on March 14th, hence the name of Saad Hariri’s coalition — “The March 14th alliance” — and the Cedar Revolution).

Among those willing to credit Obama’s new approach with these fortunate results is blogger and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, who weighed in earlier this week in Salon under the deliberately provocative title: “Obama Wins an Election in the Middle East.”

The evidence surely cannot support such an assertion, a point which Cole freely concedes. Elections are decided on the basis of local, even parochial, issues — jobs, quality of life, and vague notions of “right track vs. wrong track” — and it would be premature, at best, to suggest that the Obama speech, or even a series of subtle changes to U.S. foreign policy initiated over the past six months, were decisive factors.

Nor should we overlook the not-very-subtle threat issued by Vice President Biden during a recent trip to Beirut. At a press conference held in advance of the elections, Biden explained, “We will evaluate the shape of our assistance programs based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates.”

Cole continues:

Even before Biden’s visit and Obama’s speech, most of the Lebanese public had probably already made up its mind about the arrogant and presumptuous Hezbollah-dominated opposition. The March 14 Alliance won because of the strength of the local economy, the desire for tourism, and anger at Hezbollah for streetfighting in 2008 that left 11 dead, more than a year of protests and sit-ins, and the Hezbollah bloc’s ultimately successful attempt to strong-arm its way to effective veto power in the government.

[...]

Above all, this election was a referendum on which policies would lead to peace and prosperity. Whether they had their eye on Biden’s stick or on Obama’s carrot, the Lebanese voters made it clear that they did not believe [Hezbollah leader Hasan] Nasrallah could deliver.

These caveats aside, it is still useful to contrast the before and after pictures from the Bush years with what has happened in the past week.  We might have still more grist for the mill from today’s elections in Iran.

“It’s Obama’s time in Beirut, not Khamenei’s” declared Cole. Within a few hours (barring a run-off), we’ll know better if it is still Khamenei’s time in Tehran.

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