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A false choice

Was that real American exceptionalism, the kind that makes us truly great, countenancing as it did full freedom to engage in open dialogue at the highest level, even putting a foreign leader on stage in our own most eminent government forum to oppose vigorously the foreign policy positions and pursuits of our commander in chief?

John Brummett is blogging daily online.

Or was it a low example of contemporary American partisan politics?

I refer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's raucously applauded speech Tuesday to our Republican Congress taking vigorous exception to the foreign policy of our Democratic president.

The Onion, the satirical newspaper, seemed to come down on the side of a low example of contemporary American partisan politics. It published a spoof saying that Netanyahu, in his speech, doubled down on his criticism of President Obama by pulling out charts to demonstrate why the Affordable Care Act was a bad idea.

Funny. Pointed. Good sarcasm.

All Netanyahu actually did was what the Republican congressional leadership wanted him to do, which was say courteously respectful and complimentary things about Obama personally, then assail this administration's negotiation with Iran toward some kind of agreement by which Iran would agree not to develop nuclear weaponry, if only for a while.

Netanyahu's appearance was, in fact, both, by which I refer to both of the opening options--exceptionalism and partisanship--which posed yet another destructive false choice.

It is a great country indeed that, possessed of the power and wealth to dominate the world, permits a foreign leader to stand in its Congress and speak to great applause of his contempt for a policy of that great country's president.

Talk about introspection. Talk about tolerance. Talk about things you couldn't do in certain lesser and less admirable jurisdictions.

But it is a diseased partisan culture indeed in which Republicans would so resist and even detest this president that they would defy his official wishes--owing to his concern about the imminence of an Israeli election and the delicacy of ongoing negotiations with Iran--and bring this critic of his to their great stage at this time.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton rushed to Twitter to say: "It was good to have a truly courageous leader addressing the Congress today."

As opposed to ours, who isn't. That's how I read it, knowing as I do how disdainful our new senator is of the president to whom he owes entirely his political existence.

Equally partisan on the other side was House Minority Nancy Pelosi, who said she was nearly in tears over Netanyahu's insulting condescension that seemed to suggest the United States didn't understand full well the great threat that Iran poses.

The issue is as follows:

  1. Netanyahu, a conservative warrior embraced by the American right, says Israel knows best about Iran, owing to proximity and history and the greater and more imminent threat, and can tell you without equivocation that Iran cannot be trusted to keep any deal and will proceed even faster to nuclear weaponry if we license it only a little with international credence of a tenuous agreement.

  2. American conservatives have become much more warmly embracing of Israel as the Islamic threat has grown and as certain Democrats, including Obama, have tried to make nice--or make co-existence--with Islamic countries distrusted by Israel.

  3. The Obama administration knows as well as Netanyahu that Iran has not proven itself worthy of trust, but believes that the alternative to talking, to the ongoing direct engagement with Iranian officials in Switzerland, is ... what, exactly? Detachment and unfettered hostility? How is that better than talk? That's especially so considering that the United States is working not in a vacuum, or unilaterally, but with six other leading nations to see if perhaps some kind of accommodation with Iran can be achieved.

I don't know how any of that turns out. And I don't think anyone else does.

What I do know is that I'm proud of a country that could experience the kind of Tuesday this nation experienced.

The prime minister of an old and treasured friend, Israel, attacked our administration in a speech to our Congress, and got a standing ovation for it, while, a short distance westward on Pennsylvania Avenue, the president was peeved, and while, in Geneva, our secretary of state, John Kerry, took a stroll along the Rhone with his frequent emailing pal, Iran's American-educated foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, and chatted about the possibilities of an agreement ostensibly to limit nuclear proliferation.

We argue among ourselves. We invite our friend to lambaste our administration and its policies. We cajole our enemy rather than conquer or explode him.

Is this great country, or what?

America gets some specifics right and some specifics wrong. But, generally speaking, through it all, ours is a gloriously free, politically silly, healthily introspective and ultimately well-intended country.

We'll indict that guy who leaked our secret domestic spying programs, imposed for no reason other than fear of terrorism, if he ever comes back. But we'll give his story an Oscar while he's gone.

If everyone was like us, the world's biggest problems would be domestic partisan buffoonery and maybe a little coarseness in the popular culture.

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 03/05/2015

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