CLAREMONT, California -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry criticizes President George W. Bush for "going it alone in Iraq," for failing to build the support of the United Nations and for failing to build an international coalition of America's traditional allies.
Bush is not the first president to fill the sting of these accusations. America's elite media and intellectual class used them repeatedly to indict the foreign policies of his father and President Ronald Reagan.
Even as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stood at Reagan's side, Reagan was frequently accused of "going it alone." John Oakes, senior editor of The New York Times, pointed the finger at Reagan for substituting "a mindless militarism for a foreign policy . . . frightening our friends from Japan to West Germany." Strobe Talbott, a prominent foreign affairs columnist for Time Magazine who subsequently became deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, criticized Reagan's "instinctive predilection for unilateral" efforts in foreign policy.