There are moments when you can glimpse an emerging bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, and Monday night’s presidential debate was one of them: Barack Obama and Mitt Romney knew they were speaking to a war-weary country and talked in nearly identical terms about bringing troops home, avoiding new conflicts — and countering terrorism without embracing a “global war.”
Obama has articulated versions of this foreign-policy approach for the past four years, not always with clarity or evident public support. But it was obvious Monday night that we are living in a changed world — where the combative ethos of George W. Bush is truly gone — when Romney said in his first debate answer: “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.”
This rejection of what was described just a few years ago as the “long war” is something I hear from four-star generals and soldiers in the field, and it’s increasingly evident in the public-opinion polls. Monday’s debate ratified that America in 2012 wants to settle the conflicts it has and avoid new ones.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member