Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

From Gerard Baker in the Times of London:

As an adviser to Mr Obama noted recently at a transatlantic conference in Washington, the differences for Europe between a first Obama administration and the second Bush Administration will probably be smaller than the differences between the first and the second Bush terms.

My biggest worry, in fact, is that Mr Obama wins and the Democrats get a huge majority in Congress. The new president will be focused hard on two big policy challenges in Washington - dealing with Iraq and reforming US healthcare. He won't have a lot of political capital to spare to stand up to a resurgent Democratic Party in Congress over trade policy, and the US could slide further towards protectionism.

Meanwhile, a big Republican defeat in November is quite likely to result in a very nasty isolationist turn inside the opposition party. The neoconservatives - those bad guys who believe that the US should spend blood and treasure trying to bring democracy to the great unwashed - will be discredited. President Obama could find himself under pressure from both parties in Congress to put US interests first.

All of this means that the new president will have to spend a fair amount of time on trips to Europe explaining to his admirers why he really isn't able to deliver that much.

A new president constrained by politics to perform much as his predecessor on the international scene? That's an interesting premise. I've been working on the assumption that Obama would bring some significant change to foreign policy -- OK, on Iraq and Afghanistan if nothing else.

I still think that a President Obama's overseas priorities would be somewhat different than those of President Bush, but it's quite possible that Europeans (Baker's main audience) might not find him as welcome a change as they anticipate. That's especially true if the next president simply substitutes a preoccupation with Pakistan and (trendy) Sudan for the current administration's obsession with Iraq. And nobody will be happy if the next White House occupant succumbs to protectionist pressures.