Inside the GOP's toughness problem

Barack Obama has overseen and instigated military actions around the globe. And yet, he is widely perceived — especially by Republicans — as distinctively lacking in "toughness."

Despite the perceived squishiness of our Democratic president, Americans instinctively realize that, heading into 2016, the toughness issue is a decidedly Republican problem. That's because George W. Bush created a toughness problem that Republicans haven't recovered from, mostly because they don't know how. Compounding the problem, many influential Republicans don't even believe there's a problem. Toughness is toughness, period, they believe. It can't be rationalized, it can't be simulated, and it can't be expected to explain itself. Either you have it or you don't, and damn it, you'd better.

Or, as Peggy Noonan recently paraphrased one Republican governor, mercifully left anonymous: "Foreign policy still comes down, always, to your gut, your instincts. And your instincts are sharpened by the kind of experience you get as a chief executive in a statehouse, which is constant negotiation with antagonists with built-in power bases."

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Think Ronald Reagan. Armed to the teeth. On a velociraptor. With an American flag. Too often, that Republican fantasy issues forth in mere meddlesomeness and pugnaciousness.

For the world affairs establishment, this is scary stuff. It's also risible. (In a fit of pique, Dan Drezner retitled Noonan's story "The Twilight of Foreign Policy Expertise.") We're accustomed to seeing elites and commoners on opposite sides of cultural battles with big political themes, but increasingly, ordinary Americans are uncomfortable with the ethic of toughness too. They don't like it in their personal lives, they detest it in corporate life, and they fear that, today, government makes costly and dangerous mistakes when it's guided by the gut instincts of confrontational men.

Somehow, Republicans must pass between two gnarly perils to score in '16. To the left, they must avoid coming off as chesty mansplainers — pugnacious, self-entitled jerks who won't do their homework and look upon experts as eunuchs and wimps. To the right, the opposite: The nominee must connect with the base as a virile, confident, and courageous American — and, barring divine intervention on behalf of Carly Fiorina, a real man.

Can it be done?

One hundred percent. But it won't be easy. The good news for Republicans is that presidents do need guts and instinct to handle foreign policy well. They're necessary but insufficient qualities of character, and when it comes to statecraft, character counts. Perhaps nowhere in presidential politics is sound judgment more important and better rewarded than in foreign affairs. The problem with experts isn't that they're effete or gutless. It's that judgment calls aren't their job. They can only get a president so far. There's only one seat at the president's desk. And there's only one person in the president's chair.

Without wisdom, however, character ironically retreats even as it grows more aggressive. Rashness and imprudence replace canny maneuver and steely resolve. The executive's vaunted "experience" is eclipsed by a bogus faith in abstract ideas, as if, caught in the crunch, we can take counsel of "democracy" or "freedom" or "equality." Such things can and should refresh a president's recollection about America's potential role in the world. Alone, they cannot relieve a president of the burdens imposed by vexatious patterns of particular facts.

But wisdom is politically incorrect today, no matter how crucial to proper political rule. Democrat or Republican, few party operators today want to be told that big ideas and bold leadership are inadequate at best and lethal at worst. Even fewer members of the policy elite want to hear that knowledge, too, will breed hubris and overcalculation if not leavened with wisdom. If Americans have broadly turned against the tough, they have grown suspicious of the wise — in part because they dislike authority, but in part because they have lost faith that "wise men" any longer exist.

Republicans must prove otherwise. Any nominee for 2016 must account for the role of the wisdom of the ages in shaping our foreign policy. The inherent fallibility of man; the rarity of peace; the weakness and impotence of even the most powerful — these are "mature themes" even for big boys and girls, and even our elites fear their humbling implications. But unless the GOP shows the courage to present them, they're likely to scare voters away yet again.