The Democrats Beyond the Water’s Edge

Whatever happened to the idea that politics was supposed to stop at the water’s edge? It was famously articulated in 1945 by a Republican senator, Arthur Vandenberg, to express bipartisan backing for the foreign policy of President Truman. It’s hard to recall a more premeditated breach of that famous principle than the Democratic Party’s plan for sending to Munich today its most strident solons to attack President Trump on foreign soil.It’s a shocking example of the indifference among Democrats to American voters. There’s a good report of it in the Manchester Guardian newspaper, which marks how the opposition party aimed to use the Munich security summit “to urge European leaders to stand up to Donald Trump.” The roster includes Mr. Trump’s “most outspoken critics,” the Guardian adds, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Mr. Newsom, a likely White House contender for 2028, has told Europeans that “grovelling” to Mr. Trump made them seem “pathetic.” Another Democratic headliner is Senator Ruben Gallego, who has asserted that Mr. Trump “is destroying our world reputation or potentially our economic might around the world.” Politico calls the Munich appearances the Democrats’ “high-profile and substantive foreign policy rebuttal” to the president.“I think maybe other people are using this as an opportunity for them to flex whatever they want,” Mr. Gallego tells Politico. In other words, these Democrats are using the spotlight afforded by the Munich summit to air their grievances with Mr. Trump. That suggests they are putting their own political aspirations ahead of the importance of a united front on American foreign policy. That show of division offers an opportunity for America’s foes to exploit.In 1957 JFK, then a senator with presidential ambitions, took a more constructive approach to the interplay of partisan politics and foreign policy. “We should not ‘play politics’ with our nation’s security,” he averred, “or refrain from supporting the President for political reasons alone.” Such tactics, he cautioned, could cause “bitter political splits that will make subsequent bi-partisan support impossible,” a course that “responsible leaders” would avoid.Kennedy added that the “tradition of bi-partisan support abroad, in my opinion, was never intended to prevent healthy discussion at home.” Such debate, he said, is how “a democracy corrects its errors.” He said “the opposition party offers a channel for legitimate concern and dissent on foreign policy,” but stressed the importance of “dissent without disunity.” That lesson appears to be ignored by today’s generation of Democratic aspirants.The Democrats’ anti-Trump posture seems to align them with, say, a critic like Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who today claimed that America’s mantle of world leadership “has been challenged, and possibly squandered.” He warned: “In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone.” Herr Merz reckons that a transatlantic gap has opened and “the culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours.”Munich is not the first time that the Democrats have made an end-run around domestic opponents. President Obama, to get his Iran pact done, went around Congress, which emerged as what the Times called “overwhelmingly” against it in both houses, and struck a deal with the United Nations. No doubt this was one of the reasons why, in 2016, voters rejected the Democrats and went with the GOP candidate. That’s a caution for the Democrats in 2028.

The Democrats Beyond the Water’s Edge

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