Republicans need to stop childishly pretending that American power is limitless

When President Obama almost taunted critics of the Iranian nuclear deal by challenging them to describe their alternative, it was hardly a surprise that no detailed plans were forthcoming. Even the most hawkish Republican knows it would be politically disastrous to say that what we need is to launch another war in the Middle East. But there isn't another readily available course for handling this situation if you reject what the administration negotiated.

Indeed, what infuriates Republicans as much as anything is that Obama took the country down diplomacy's path — a path that accepts from the outset that compromise is inevitable.

More than ever, compromise seems outside the worldview of the GOP. You can see it in Congress, where the party's base has elected more and more representatives who would rather have a noble, even disastrous failure than a partial success — if success means coming to an agreement with a president they despise. No matter how many times conservatives attempt to shut down the government and wind up with an ignominious defeat, they continue to believe that next time will be different — that Obama will surrender, and all their goals will be achieved.

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You can see it in how hawkish Republicans have thought about Iran for years. Republicans were smitten by Benjamin Netanyahu's fantasy vision of a "better deal" with Iran, which involved Iran ending its nuclear program, giving up support for Hezbollah and every other terrorist organization, becoming a force for peace in the region, and maybe also baking Netanyahu a delicious pie, all while asking for nothing in return. If you actually thought that was possible, then of course the deal that was negotiated looks like a capitulation. As Peter Beinart recently wrote, "When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they're really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent."

That fact is the assumption underlying diplomatic negotiation: If we were omnipotent, then we wouldn't have to negotiate. We could just impose our will. Republicans find President Obama's willingness to acknowledge that America is not omnipotent to be utterly maddening.

When you listen to them talk about foreign affairs, what comes through clearly is that they believe that if America is not omnipotent, this is merely a temporary situation that can be remedied with more military spending, a stiffening of the spine, and a Republican in the White House. There is no situation that cannot be resolved with precisely the outcome we want, if only we are sufficiently strong and tough. For instance, here's how Mike Huckabee describes the world he would create if he were to become president:

Since one of my rules for campaign coverage is to assume unless you have countervailing evidence that politicians are sincere in what they say, I'll assume that Huckabee genuinely believes that a complex problem like ISIS could be solved in 10 days, if only we were fierce enough. While his opponents might not go quite that far, with the exception of Rand Paul they all believe that the reason there are unsolved problems in the world is that we haven't been strong enough. They quote action movie lines and say that increasing the size of the military will give us the strength we need to bend every country and non-state actor to our will.

Huckabee may not realize this, but we already have the strongest military in the history of mankind. Could it be even stronger? Sure. We could shut down Social Security and use the money to double the size of the military (a plan I think more than a few Republicans would embrace). But even that military would confront some problems it couldn't solve, because that's just how the world is.

What may be most remarkable is that it was George W. Bush — who, you may remember, was not given to nuanced thinking, worrying about unintended consequences, or talk of compromise with "evildoers" — who brought us the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, Republicans say (though obviously not in so many words) that if only we could be more like Bush, our foreign policy would be an unending string of unequivocal triumphs, as every danger to ourselves or our friends evaporated before our terrifying might.

It's an inspiring vision, one in which perfect outcomes are not only possible but relatively easy to obtain. It's also an outlook more appropriate for children who have no experience to learn from, than for a party asking to be given control of the world's last superpower.