Commentary
A smart power bridge?
Arnaud de Borchgrave
January 11, 2008

The bipartisan conclave in Oklahoma this week was designed as a bridge between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats who seek to use "smart power" to build a new world order.
Smart power is the skillful conjugation of soft (diplomacy) and hard power (military intervention), which kept the world at peace for half the 20th century (Korea and Vietnam were bumps on the road).

Smart power, bipartisan luminaries — e.g., former Sens. Sam Nunn, Chuck Robb, Gary Hart, Bob Graham and David Boren (the convener) for the Democrats, and William S. Cohen, Bill Brock, John C. Danforth, and Chuck Hagel, the only sitting senator, for the Republicans — agreed on a formula for national salvation.

The recipe, a coalition government of national unity, has been tried in other Western democracies with varying degrees of success. In Washington, this would translate into a Cabinet of experts drawn from both parties who would reach across party lines on the most critical areas facing the nation over the next 10 years. National security, the Iraq war-drained military, health care, education, the environment and infrastructure are at the top of the list.

Former Sen. Nunn, the elder statesman of the group, said "rampant partisanship" has paralyzed government's ability to act decisively: "If we unify, we can turn America's peril into America's promise."

Germany is governed by a coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel. It can also be a formula for inaction, e.g., left of center wants Germany to bring back its troops from Afghanistan, right of center wants them to stay — provided they are not involved in any fighting. So Mrs. Merkel won the vote to extend German participation — another year.

The surprise attendee at the Norman, Okla., gathering of 17 "outstanding public servants" was New York's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the moderates' undeclared favorite as an independent candidate who could bring about the bipartisan consensus they seek.

But judging from the early presidential smoke signals from Iowa and New Hampshire, Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, as the bipartisan moderates understood his message, could become a more plausible unifier than Mr. Bloomberg.

The switch from Mr. Bloomberg to Mr. Obama came when the senator said, "The time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that has consumed Washington." Mr. Obama's recipe: "A working coalition for change." That is precisely what the elders from both parties originally had in mind for Mr. Bloomberg.

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