Foreign Relations

The Foreign Press Center Election tour also took in a visit to the Council on Foreign Relations offices uptown to hear from Walter Russell Mead., noted author and Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the CFR. A contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times, he also writes for the NY times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Foreign Affairs.

Basically he says the United States, by any standard, has had a more successful foreign policy - but that the Us is still really bad at developing that policy... He attributes this unprecedented success (as well as recurring problems) to the interplay of four schools of thought, each with deep roots in domestic politics and each characterized by a central focus or concern, that have shaped foreign policy debates since the American Revolution—the "Hamiltonian": the protection of commerce; the "Jeffersonian": the maintenance of the democratic system; the "Jacksonian": populist values and military might; and the "Wilsonian": moral principles. These four schools, says Mead, are as vital today as they were two hundred years ago, and they can and should guide the nation through the challenges ahead. I think Stephen Colbert should do a review...