A Thought about Steve King (R.- Iowa)

It's hard to resist commenting on the remarks made by Representative Steve King. During the tour announcing his bid for a fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Iowa Republican noted his support for the election of John McCain and contended in part:

I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name -whatever their religion their father might have been. I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?.... Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict.

The bigotry implicit in these remarks doesn't interest me; King cannot compete with Reverend John Hagee. Neither does the reference to Obama having an unusual middle name; I'm aware that if the Illinois senator is nominated, there will be plenty of references to Obama's middle name by Republicans, probably each time McCain declaring how shocked, or offended, he is by such tactics.

Instead, I'm intrigued at 1)the (probably intentional) misunderstanding of the Middle East policy of a candidate who says that if there is actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden (in whom Republicans once were interested) is in Pakistan and that government doesn't take action, he would- a position about which the Repub candidate for president has expressed skepticism; and 2) that Barack Obama's background, be it African-American or misrepresented as Muslim, does matter. This is a notion, I think, held by many Americans, including many supporters of Obama (and, incidentally, by Don Imus, who loves and supports John McCain, but who believes a President Obama's background, however he interprets it, would improve our image abroad.) It's a perspective held by many on the right, and by many on the left. And it is wrong. An American president named Barack Obama, or Barack Hussein Obama, born of a father from Kenya and having lived in Indonesia and the island of Hawaii, would be fascinating and perhaps heartening to much of the world. For about 15 minutes. Thereafter, each regime would get on with looking out for its national interest, positively or negatively, and react as necessary to the conduct of American foreign policy.

Consider Libya. On December 19, 2003 Prime Minister Blair of England and President Bush announced that the government of Moammar Gadhafi had agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and permit inspections by international agencies. As wrongheaded- and inept- as George W. Bush has been in conducting foreign affairs, this appears to have been a victory for the west- won because the action Libya took was in its national interest.