Richard Haass: We Have ‘The Most Radical Foreign Policy of Any American President Now Since Harry Truman’

EXCERPT:

HAASS: “In many ways John McCain represents the main tradition of the American foreign policy. As you were suggesting, what’s so worrisome or bizarre, choose whatever word you want about this moment, is the mainstream in many cases has been relegated to being outsiders or a minority, but we have in some ways what I would describe as the most radical foreign policy of any American president now since Harry Truman. So John McCain was firmly in the Truman through Reagan through George Bush Sr. and so forth tradition, very internationalist, supporting allies, working through international institutions, working closest with democratic countries, tough towards Russia, worried slightly about China, and suddenly we have something extraordinarily different. And the fact that it stands out is telling. And one of the worrying things over the last few years, whether it’s about foreign policy or anything else, is where is the Congress? This is supposed to be the classroom of American foreign policy, holding hearings, challenging the president when they disagree, reining him in, providing resources where they think is necessary, and all too often the Congress has been missing in action."