Yesterday, Pres. Obama gave his first interview as president to an Arab TV station, Al Arabiya. The interview covered the predictable bases — Israel/Palestine, Al Qeada, Iran, the “demonization” of America — but it was not the content of the interview that was striking, but his tone and the symbolic act of making this his first interview as president (just as his first call as president was to the PLO’s President Abbas).
His tone paralleled a point we enunciate here at M25, a point that has been at times lost during the extreme partisanship of the recent past — that one can hold to strong convictions and two parties can hold strong disagreements, but that mutual respect, careful language, and a political method that works towards consensus are the means by which those strong convictions are most effectively and constructively acted upon. Obama’s message to the Muslim world was clear: I am now here, and this is a whole new ball game. There was no dramatic shift in policy — the President stated that Israel’s security will always be “paramount,” — but literal policy was not always the problem in the Bush White House. The old language (”Islamofascism,” the broadly defined “War on Terror,” the defiant attitude) and the old methodology (unilateralism, the cutting off of diplomatic channels) did more damage to America’s reputation than our actions.
I do think it is important to note that this shift in dialogue is a big part of the new type of politics that we need to bring to this country domestically as well. We can have strong policy convictions, and actively work in electoral politics by backing candidates who hold to these policy issues, while also holding to a tone of respect and working towards common ground to get progressive policies enacted. The oft-used rhetoric of war within our country’s politics must be put aside. That is not how international diplomacy is accomplished; it is not how the re-building of our own nation is accomplished either.
