Thank you, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous Obama Adviser Speaking on Background to Ryan Lizza. Thank you for so boldly and visibly injecting into our politics the phrase “leading from behind.” Thank you for associating it with your boss. Thanks for confirming that our current president believes his task is to accommodate American decline. Thanks for reminding us how high a priority he places on appeasing those who revile us. And thanks for explaining that our Leader from Behind sees his role as “shepherding us through this phase” of appeasement and decline. 
 
 Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” That’s not a slogan designed for signs at the 2012 Democratic convention, but it does accurately describe the balance that Obama now seems to be finding. It’s a different definition of leadership than America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world. Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength. “It’s so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world,” the adviser said. “But it’s necessary for shepherding us through this phase.” 
 
 After all, we, like sheep, had gone astray. Under the spell of John Wayne, Rambo, and Ronald Reagan, we’d come to believe in American exceptionalism, in a special American global role and responsibility. Or perhaps we’ve been astray from the very beginning, with all the talk from the Founding on about our distinctive task and national destiny. But now a new shepherd has come to guide us, stealthily and modestly (though, one must add, with a fair amount of personal self-promotion) away from foolish thoughts of national assertion and exertion. And toward a future of . . . what? 
 
 Whatever this future world will look like, it will not be pretty, nor will it be friendly to America. Lizza’s piece is titled “The Consequentialist.” The claim is that Barack Obama is a hard-headed pragmatist who judges policy choices by their real-world consequences. But who now wants to defend the consequences of Barack Obama’s foreign policy? 
 
 As Americans, we will have to hope and work for the best for the next year and a half. But, as Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, “from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate,” Obama’s has been “a foreign policy of hesitation, delay, and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) ‘international community’ to do what only America can.” The consequences of leading from behind have been grave. Another four years could be disastrous. 
 
 Of course, the talk of leading from behind is mostly rationalization. When Barack Obama was only a teenager, Harvey Mansfield noted that, “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism.” Mansfield asked, “Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?” Not President Obama. His administration’s lack of strength and confidence in defense of liberty, its trembling before illiberalism, its failure to lead, is now dressed up and sent out into the world as “leading from behind.” 
 
 The world isn’t much fooled. Dictators aren’t fooled. The American people aren’t fooled. Even liberals are getting hard to fool. Lizza’s article gave the Obama adviser the last word. But did even the typical New Yorker reader nod in approbation as he put down his May 2 issue and picked up his glass of Chablis? 
 
 We doubt it. It’s getting pretty difficult to avoid noticing the grand mugging by reality that we are experiencing, both abroad and at home. And the notion that the Obama administration is effectively dealing with the muggers—from Qaddafi to the budget deficit—is becoming increasingly laughable. 
 
 How do you defeat a leader from behind? With a leader from the front. All the Republicans have to do is nominate a real leader: a workhorse not a show horse; a steady hand not a flip-flopper; a profile in courage not in cleverness; a competent man or woman with strength and confidence in defense of liberty at home and abroad. 
 
 Surely this isn’t too much to ask? ||||| Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” 
 
 — Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue 
 
 To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do. 
 
 And it surely is an accurate description, from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It’s been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) “international community” to do what only America can. 
 
 But underlying that style, assures this Obama adviser, there really are ideas. Indeed, “two unspoken beliefs,” explains Lizza. “That the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.” 
 
 Amazing. This is why Obama is deliberately diminishing American presence, standing and leadership in the world? 
 
 Take proposition one: We must “lead from behind” because U.S. relative power is declining. Even if you accept the premise, it’s a complete non sequitur. What does China’s rising GDP have to do with American buck-passing on Libya, misjudging Iran, appeasing Syria? 
 
 True, China is rising. But first, it is the only power of any significance rising militarily relative to us. Russia is recovering from levels of military strength so low that it barely registers globally. And European power is in true decline (see Europe’s performance — excepting the British — in Afghanistan and its current misadventures in Libya). 
 
 And second, the challenge of a rising Chinese military is still exclusively regional. It would affect a war over Taiwan. It has zero effect on anything significantly beyond China’s coast. China has no blue-water navy. It has no foreign bases. It cannot project power globally. It might in the future — but by what logic should that paralyze us today? 
 
 Proposition two: We must lead from behind because we are reviled. Pray tell, when were we not? During Vietnam? Or earlier, under Eisenhower? When his vice president was sent on a goodwill trip to Latin America, he was spat upon and so threatened by the crowds that he had to cut short his trip. Or maybe later, under the blessed Reagan? The Reagan years were marked by vast demonstrations in the capitals of our closest allies denouncing America as a warmongering menace taking the world into nuclear winter. 
 
 “Obama came of age politically,” explains Lizza, “during the post-Cold War era, a time when America’s unmatched power created widespread resentment.” But the world did not begin with the coming to consciousness of Barack Obama. Cold War resentments ran just as deep. 
 
 It is the fate of any assertive superpower to be envied, denounced and blamed for everything under the sun. Nothing has changed. Moreover, for a country so deeply reviled, why during the massive unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Syria have anti-American demonstrations been such a rarity? 
 
 Who truly reviles America the hegemon? The world that Obama lived in and shaped him intellectually: the elite universities; his Hyde Park milieu (including his not-to-be-mentioned friends, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn); the church he attended for two decades, ringing with sermons more virulently anti-American than anything heard in today’s full-throated uprising of the Arab Street. 
 
 It is the liberal elites who revile the American colossus and devoutly wish to see it cut down to size. Leading from behind — diminishing America’s global standing and assertiveness — is a reaction to their view of America, not the world’s. 
 
 Other presidents have taken anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing — as do most Americans — in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America’s fitness for leadership. I would suggest that “leading from behind” is a verdict on Obama’s fitness for leadership. 
 
 Leading from behind is not leading. It is abdicating. It is also an oxymoron. Yet a sympathetic journalist, channeling an Obama adviser, elevates it to a doctrine. The president is no doubt flattered. The rest of us are merely stunned. 
 
 letters@charleskrauthammer.com ||||| Republican challenger Mitt Romney sought to portray President Barack Obama as weak on foreign policy Wednesday after violent attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East. Obama steered clear of the political fight, declaring as commander in chief that "justice will be done" in response to the deaths of four Americans in Libya. 
 
 Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney makes comments on the killing of U.S. embassy officials in Benghazi, Libya, while speaking in Jacksonville, Fla., Wednesday, Sept.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Romney used the attacks as an opening to assail Obama during an appearance in swing state Florida, accusing the administration of sending "mixed signals to the world" and failing to lead in the face of violence. 
 
 Obama avoided engaging his political rival during an appearance in the White House Rose Garden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Addressing the nation and the world, he said there was "absolutely no justification for this kind of senseless violence _ none." He was responding to the Tuesday night attack that killed U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff. 
 
 Romney had jumped to criticize Obama as the attacks were being waged on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya. Angry mobs attacked the facilities to protest an obscure film by a California filmmaker that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad. 
 
 The U.S. Embassy in Cairo initially issued a statement that criticized the film. Romney, trailing Obama in public opinion polls on their leadership on foreign policy, quickly pounced with a statement before news of the diplomats' deaths, saying the administration's response seemed to "sympathize with those who waged the attacks." 
 
 As news of the deaths came from the White House Wednesday morning, the Romney team scrambled to change a speech before supporters in his Jacksonville, Fla., campaign headquarters to a more somber event. The supporters were ushered from the room and four flags were set up behind the podium from which Romney read a brief statement mentioning Egypt and contending that Obama is a weak leader. He then invited questions from reporters, who asked if it was an appropriate tone to take given the deaths and that the White House said it disagreed with the embassy statement. Romney stood firm. 
 
 "The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth, but also for the words that come from his ambassadors , from his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department," Romney said. "They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. The statement that came from the administration _ and the embassy is the administration _ the statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology. And I think was a severe miscalculation." 
 
 Obama did not mention Romney and instead focused on the diplomats who were lost. He ignored reporters' shouted questions asking him to respond to Romney, keeping himself out of the fray and leaving the job to other Democrats. 
 
 "Gov. Romney's comments are about as inappropriate as anything I have ever seen at this kind of a moment," Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry told reporters. "They are flat wrong but they demonstrate an insensitivity and a lack of judgment about what is happening right now. To make those kinds of statements before you even know the facts, before families have even been notified before things have played out is really not just inexperienced, it's irresponsible, it's callous, it's reckless. And I think he ought to apologize and I don't think he knows what he's talking about frankly. 
 
 The Mideast attacks pivoted the election to foreign policy, an area where the president who commanded the mission that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has a lead in polling even though Republicans traditionally have an edge. 
 
 "The attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place and that American leadership is still sorely needed," Romney said Wednesday. "In the face of this violence, American cannot shrink from the responsibility to lead. American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don't spin out of control. We cannot hesitate to use our influence in the region to support those who share our values and our interests. 
 
 "As I've watched over the past three and a half years, the president has had some successes. He's had some failures," Romney said. "It's a hit-or-miss approach, but it has not been based upon sound foreign policy." 
 
 Obama was more cautious in responding to the attacks as the situation evolved. The White House says Obama was informed of the Libya attacks Tuesday afternoon during his weekly meeting with Pentagon leaders and told later in the evening that Stevens was unaccounted for. Obama learned of the ambassador's death Wednesday morning, the White House said. 
 
 On Capitol Hill, where flags were lowered to half-staff, Republicans mostly steered clear of the political criticism that Romney leveled at Obama over foreign policy, focusing on the lives lost in the Egyptian and Libyan attacks and imploring the two governments to condemn the incidents and protect American diplomatic missions. 
 
 Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Americans "will stand united in our response." 
 
 "Among the things we can all agree on in Washington is that attacks on the U.S. and its representatives will be met with resolve, and that America's presence and defense of our national interests across the globe will not be deterred by the acts of violent extremists," he said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Pickler reported from Washington.
– The "leading from behind" theme looks to be emerging as a conservative line of attack against President Obama. The phrase comes from an Obama adviser describing the Libya strategy in a New Yorker piece on foreign policy by Ryan Lizza. (Read it here.) The gist is that Obama is a pragmatist who recognizes that US power is declining and that a lot of people hate us. "Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as military strength," writes Lizza. It's the anti-John-Wayne approach, adds the Obama adviser quoted earlier. Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer weighed in at the Washington Post, criticizing the piece for turning a "foreign policy of hesitation" into a doctrine. "Leading from behind is not leading," Krauthammer writes. "It is abdicating." Now William Kristol at the Weekly Standard is on the case, sarcastically thanking Lizza for making clear that Obama is "shepherding" the country through this age of "appeasement and decline." He wants Republicans to take note: "How do you defeat a leader from behind? With a leader from the front." The party, therefore, needs a "workhorse, not a show horse."