Washington — Over the past decade, U.S. officials systematically portrayed the world as a source of prosperity and opportunity for Americans, who generally bought into this managed optimism. The Clinton era was a time to paste a smiley face on the globe and take profits where they were.
Declines in economic growth and a plummeting stock market have wiped part of that '90s grin off the nation's face. Also reinforcing a mood swing toward anxiety is the official rhetoric of the Bush administration, which proclaims that Americans face recession, "crisis" conditions in energy supplies and a world full of neglected security "threats" that must be countered now.
OPEC rides high again in a world that is suddenly at American throats rather than at American feet. Spy wars with Moscow, windows of U.S. vulnerability to incoming missiles and other 1970s themes of conflict and scarcity push the psychological calendar back three decades.
George W. Bush's apparent historical pessimism is no doubt as calculated as was Bill Clinton's often forced cheeriness. Bush paints in darker colors now to build immediate support for his tax-cut legislation, oil-exploration program and military reform ideas. You have to think (or at least hope) that he hurries the clouds into place so the sunny side will break out closer to re-election day.
But no one controls his or her words or ideas once they have been uttered. Listeners bring their own experiences and expectations to bear on the leader's rhetoric and images. Like markets, national audiences often overshoot. In short, the cumulative national impact of the kind of low-balling Bush seems to be practicing is hard to calculate.
Emphasizing the downside carries its own dangers, even if they are ultimately less severe than the perils created by naive and overblown expectations of the kind that often characterized the Clinton administration.
Two qualifications need to be acknowledged: 1. The world according to Clinton was not always cooperative or acquiescent to expanding markets and democracy. The Balkans, Rwanda and Asia's financial crisis are obvious cases in point.
But these points of turmoil did not derail the general acceptance of a world contributing to, rather than hindering, American prosperity. Americans seemed to be swimming ahead of history's tide: Globalization encouraged other nations to emulate or participate in our financial and technological revolutions, and in different ways to pay for the privilege.
2. The Bush spokesmen are not making this stuff up. The global economy is in trouble, North Korea is an unpredictable and blackmailing dictatorship, Vladimir Putin is building a KGB-run Russian state that appears ready to challenge U.S. interests. The new president has inherited more than his fair share of problems that begin outside U.S. borders.
What is unclear is how much the gloomy-to-detached statements at the White House, Treasury and elsewhere are adding to the problem, and ultimately risk returning Americans to a more inward-looking, defensive frame of mind about their role in the world.
There is no isolationist intent here. Bush and his principal aides have convincingly dispelled that phony accusation. But there is an open disinterest in many forms of international cooperation especially in the financial realm that supported the push in the last decade for dismantling global barriers.
The Bush administration says it does not want to be the world's 911 that it does not want to be called on to intervene in foreign emergencies. That leads one analyst here to conclude that Bush's Washington is to become 411, available to tell those with problems where to go for help.
It is a tempting vision. But it belongs to another era. Being reachable at 411 is not enough if the wheels come off in a real crisis. It will not even counter the growing backlash against globalization.
Americans react one way to a world that they perceive as a source of opportunity, and another to a world they see as a source of turmoil. The White House needs to evaluate carefully the enormous impact it has on determining which world it will be.
Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
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