Thomas L. Friedman: Obama's health-care victory strengthens his hand around the world
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I've been thinking about President Barack Obama's foreign policy lately, but first, a golf tip:
I went to Dave Pelz's famous short-game school this winter to improve my putting and chipping, and a funny thing happened -- my long game got better. It brings to mind something that happened to Mr. Obama. The president got health care reform passed, and it may turn out to be his single most important foreign policy achievement.
In politics and diplomacy, success breeds authority and authority breeds more success. No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."
Have no illusions, the rest of the world was watching our health care debate very closely, waiting to see who would be the strong horse -- Mr. Obama or his Democratic and Republican health care opponents. At every turn in the debate, America's enemies and rivals were gauging what the outcome might mean for their own ability to push around an untested U.S. president.
It remains to be seen whether, in the long run, America will be made physically healthier by the bill's passage. But, in the short run, Mr. Obama definitely was made geopolitically healthier.
"When others see the president as a winner or as somebody who has real authority in his own house, it absolutely makes a difference," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said to me in an interview. "All you have to do is look at how many minority or weak coalition governments there are around the world who can't deliver something big in their own country, but basically just teeter on the edge, because they can't put together the votes to do anything consequential, because of the divided electorate." Mr. Obama's had "a divided electorate and was still able to muscle the thing through."
First Published April 22, 2010 12:00 am
