LOS ANGELES -- On the controversial issue of a so-called global test for prudent foreign policy, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has been skillfully put on the defensive by the Republican re-election machine. This is brilliant campaign politics but a potentially fatal foreign-policy direction.
In the first presidential debate, Kerry proposed seeking global acceptance for major U.S. foreign-policy initiatives. Alas, predictably, it triggered a withering Republican attack that the notion suggested wimpishness, as if Republicans were the global he-men and the foppish Democrats global "girlie-boys."
In response, Kerry backpedaled faster than a mouse catching wind of a hungry rattlesnake. That's too bad. On the substantive merits of the issue itself, Kerry is right and President George W. Bush is wrong. Major American foreign policy initiatives should and must pass some kind of informal global litmus test unless this country wishes to enter into a new kind of isolationism: not so much shrinking into our own borders but -- even more dangerous -- mostly going it alone every time we have in mind a major international move.