Iran and Honduras: For Obama, Two Challenges, Two Different Responses

Who knew Joe Biden was so clairvoyant?

In the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign, he predicted that Barack Obama's foreign policy mettle would be tested. He also predicted that Obama would pass the test. He may yet be proven right about that, too.

"Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy," the Democrats' vice presidential nominee warned at a Seattle fundraiser in late October. "The world is looking....'Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.' "

All right, Joe, we'll give you that, although how well Obama performed in responding to the dual crises in Iran and Honduras remains an open question. But this much is certain: Responding sure-footedly to just such events is one of a commander-in-chief's most important functions.

In Bill Clinton's first term as president, journalist Jeffrey H. Birnbaum had the savvy idea of following six White House staffers for a period of time and chronicling their experiences in a book. Birnbaum ended up titling his account "Madhouse," and its readers were left with one overriding impression: The modern American presidency is a reactive job.

The president, and those who work for him, spend most of their time scrambling in response to one crisis after another. These challenges come at the White House in warp speed, from every conceivable point on the political spectrum and every corner of the globe. And how a president positions his administration on events ranging from demands for gay rights to a frightful terrorist attack, sets the tone of his presidency – and the course of world history.

If he didn't know it before, Barack Obama knows this now. Unfolding events on opposite ends of the globe, in Tegucigalpa and Tehran, have seen to that. The world is now judging him based on his reactions to each nation's crucible, and considering whether his low-key, establishment approach to foreign policy is truly change you can believe in.

When Obama ran in 2008, he extolled the value of talking to all world leaders, no matter how onerous, and made a point of including in that calculus Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the crude, Holocaust-denying president of Iran. In so doing, Obama positioned himself in direct contrast to George W. Bush, whose worldwide popularity plummeted after the invasion of Iraq. But Obama may not have studied his recent political history as thoroughly as he thought. None of that had been Bush's plan.

As a candidate, Bush evinced little interest in war or even international affairs in 2000. The Texas governor quietly promised a "humble" foreign policy, and seemed hard-pressed to name a place on Earth where he foresaw the use of American combat troops.

The attacks of 9/11 changed all that, of course. They also altered Bush's very philosophy: His isolationist leanings seemingly were replaced by a belief not only that democracy could (and often should) be inculcated at the point of a gun, but that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon showed the world had grown too small to allow terrorist-sponsoring regimes such as the Taliban to exist at all.

Hence, the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The moral of the story isn't that Bush was disingenuous when he ran for office; it's that presidents are buffeted by events out of their control. That can be its own trap. Painted into a corner by his you're-either-with-us-or-against-us rhetoric, Bush stumbled badly in Latin America, the region of the world, ironically, that he knew the best.

In April 2002, Venezuelan military men launched a coup similar to the Honduras operation undertaken last weekend. The CIA had apparently been warned of an impending coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and did nothing to stop it. Moreover, the Bush administration immediately made statements recognizing the new rump government. Yes, Hugo Chavez is an America-bashing demagogue who has repressed dissent and political opposition in his country. But he was chosen by the Venezuelan people – and when he was quickly returned to power, Bush had made an enemy for life. Worse, he'd undermined the moral authority of his own "freedom agenda."

Obama was determined to do better. He dismissed Bush's Manichean worldview as simplistic, and ineffective as well. In a Democratic presidential debate on July 24, 2007, Obama was asked this question:

"Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"

"I would," candidate Obama replied. "And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them – which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration – is ridiculous."

As fate would have it, the first real crisis facing his administration involved one of those leaders. For essentially staying out of the fray, Obama was treated to the spectacle of watching Ahmadinejad apparently rig an election, order government goons to shoot peaceful citizens protesting that result –then turn around and blame the CIA, Israel, and Obama himself for the entire mess.

That horror show was still unfolding when Honduran military officers arrested leftist President Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas, and put him on a plane to Costa Rica while the Honduran Congress could install the president of the Congress in his place. The always bombastic Hugo Chavez immediately blamed Washington for the coup. This time, Obama's cool-headed establishment approach clearly helped him. Obama consciously tried to avoid making his behavior the issue in Iran; he took the opposite tack in Honduras. Obama did not recognize the new government. Along with virtually every government in the Western Hemisphere, he demanded the return of Zelaya to office.

On Tuesday, when the United Nations backed the ousted Honduras leader, Obama found himself on the side of world public opinion – and of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. It's been awhile since the United States found itself in this role.

To be sure, there are those in the U.S. – and elsewhere – who see Obama's exercise in realpolitik to be troubling.

"Let's see if you can follow the bouncing diplomatic ball," former Bush aide Peter Wehner, wrote on Commentary magazine's website on Monday. "In order to justify his timid early words regarding the Iranian suppression of liberty, Barack Obama based his argument on how important it is for the United States to not 'meddle' in the internal affairs of Iran. But today Obama said that the weekend ouster of Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya was 'not legal' and that he remains the country's president. In the first instance, Obama was clearly trying to pacify the theocratic leadership of the repressive, terror-sponsoring Iranian regime. In the case of Honduras, Obama is 'meddling' in order to protect the legitimacy of an authoritarian president who is acting as if he were above the law."

Wehner continued: "As a general matter, I'm not in favor of military coups. On the other hand, I'm not in favor of Zelaya doing to Honduras what Chavez has done in Venezuela. In any event, there doesn't seem to be any consistency on when Obama decides to meddle, beyond his tendency to take actions that make life easier for those who do not wish America well."

On Tuesday, former Clinton administration official Lawrence J. Haas picked up on this same theme.

"History suggests the United States would be wise to align itself with the forces of democracy, rather than with creaky autocracies in the Middle East and elsewhere whose days could well be numbered," Haas wrote in his syndicated column. "To be sure, authoritarian regimes of late have been digging in, and they have secured some recent successes. But their victories cannot obscure the larger reality – that democracy has spread far and wide in recent decades. It will spread further. And when it does, the United States must not find itself on the wrong side of history."

Fair enough, but when Zelaya took his place in the Honduran seat on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, he was greeted with sustained applause by the representatives of the world community. They condemned his removal and demanded the "immediate and unconditional" restoration of Honduras' president. Obama had put the United States foursquare behind that proposition, and it led to an immediate payoff.

Zelaya's loony pal Hugo Chavez had been railing that Washington was behind the Honduran coup. Zelaya laid that one to rest himself.

"The United States," he said, "has changed a great deal."