Obama Is Jeffersonian?

I read with interest with Walter Russell Mead's essay The Carter Syndrome in Foreign Policy tackling Obama's foreign policy philosophy. Tracing back the lineage of where modern leaders fit in American history is a messy if not contradictory game. As I learned it, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jackson and Wilson were the four pillars of American foreign policy- although I sometimes wonder if TDR belongs in this group. Mead attempts to fit Obama into this frame and with Jefferson in particular. John Lewis Gaddis offered a similar structure during the Bush years; in a book not an essay.

Mead sets it up this way:

In general, U.S. presidents see the world through the eyes of four giants: Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. Hamiltonians share the first Treasury secretary's belief that a strong national government and a strong military should pursue a realist global policy and that the government can and should promote economic development and the interests of American business at home and abroad. Wilsonians agree with Hamiltonians on the need for a global foreign policy, but see the promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy. Jeffersonians dissent from this globalist consensus; they want the United States to minimize its commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state. Jacksonians are today's Fox News watchers. They are populists suspicious of Hamiltonian business links, Wilsonian do-gooding, and Jeffersonian weakness.

Moderate Republicans tend to be Hamiltonians. Move right toward the Sarah Palin range of the party and the Jacksonian influence grows. Centrist Democrats tend to be interventionist-minded Wilsonians, while on the left and the dovish side they are increasingly Jeffersonian, more interested in improving American democracy at home than exporting it abroad.

Some presidents build coalitions; others stay close to one favorite school. As the Cold War ended, George H.W. Bush's administration steered a largely Hamiltonian course, and many of those Hamiltonians later dissented from his son's war in Iraq. Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s mixed Hamiltonian and Wilsonian tendencies. This dichotomy resulted in bitter administration infighting when those ideologies came into conflict -- over humanitarian interventions in the Balkans and Rwanda, for example, and again over the
relative weight to be given to human rights and trade in U.S. relations with China.

More recently, George W. Bush's presidency was defined by an effort to bring Jacksonians and Wilsonians into a coalition; the political failure of Bush's ambitious approach created the context that made the Obama presidency possible.

It does get a little messy; especially when he argued Obama's strategic policies resemble Nixon (p.3 in link).

Is Obama Jeffersonian? Not everyone is convinced. If this seems incompatible on the surface. Jefferson was a fierce defender of State rights and individual freedom. I don't see that from Obama. On a foreign policy level, which is the purpose of the article, I suppose a case can be made, however, I'm not persuaded. But aren't modern moderate conservatives in fact suspicious of foreign wars as well? Wars equal big government.

If this was an interesting alliance, how about his assertion that Jackson's populism fits neatly into the policies of Republicans like George W. Bush and the Tea Party? Does it follow then, neoconservatism is an offshoot of Andrew Jackson's Democratic party? Ironies abound!

It would help if we could determine and articulate, were he alive today, where would Jefferson be on the political scale? I don't think he'd be liberal in its current form. Conservative? He was conservative but in a liberal enlightenment period. I've read that libertarians claim him. Moreover, national security as it stands today is greatly different than it was under the four aforementioned presidents.

It's certainly a thoughtful exercise.