Democrats sell heritage for mess of pottage?.

Peter Beinart has an excellent article in the New Republic concerning Democrats' reversing their free-trade globalization civil libertarian stripes into protectionist racial-profiling nationalist stars.

Beinart's article bases its argument on a book by Walter Russell Mead, who divided American foreign policy into four headings: Wilsonian, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. Beinart expounds:

Mead described Bill Clinton's foreign policy as a coalition between Wilsonians and Hamiltonians. Wilsonians saw the post-cold-war world as a golden age for democracy. Hamiltonians saw it as a golden age for free trade. When human rights and moneymaking clashed--over China, for instance--the Wilsonians and Hamiltonians split. But they agreed on something fundamental: The best thing for America was to make the rest of the world as much like us as possible.

While Bubba Bill was making kumbayeh multicultural nice around the globe and neglecting to snatch Osama bin Laden in Sudan when the Sudanese government offered ObL on a platter [too many legal obstacles, including Jamie Gorelick]:

Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, by contrast, spent the 1990s bitter and out of power. Jeffersonians like Ralph Nader and the libertarian Cato Institute believed that U.S. efforts to refashion the world were making it an empire unaccountable to its own citizens. Jacksonians in the Republican Congress transferred their nationalist antagonism from the Soviet Union to the United Nations and other international meddlers who were encroaching on America's right to run its own affairs.

So when GWB resoundingly defeated the Gorebot by 537 votes in Florida, what did the tyro Texan stay-at-home do with his baseball card collection? This mini-41st responded to 9/11 in a way guided by his Jacksonian/Hamiltonian mentors:

This hypernationalism, combined with Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld's corporate orientation, seemed to herald a new foreign policy alliance: between Jacksonians and Hamiltonians. In late 2001, with nation-building still low on Bush's agenda, Wilsonianism seemed to have little future.

Oops, something went terribly wrong when George Tenet's famous "slam-dunk" boomeranged back off the rim:

when it turned out Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the Jacksonian rationale for war collapsed. The Hamiltonian one--that we needed Iraq's oil because we could no longer rely on a decaying Saudi Arabia--dared not speak its name. So Bush drifted in an increasingly Wilsonian direction. By 2005, freeing the Middle East had become his central rhetorical thrust. And, ever since, Bush's foreign policy has had three characteristics: Wilsonian (the crusade for democracy), Hamiltonian (securing oil), and Jacksonian (doing "whatever it takes" to defeat the terrorists, civil liberties and international opinion be damned).

Three out of four seemed nationalist nirvana, but then came the Port debacle:

But, for Jacksonians, it is never worth sacrificing concrete U.S. interests to make foreigners feel better. A couple of years ago, that was the dominant sentiment in Bush foreign policy. Today, however, with Cheney's influence waning, Condoleezza Rice trying to mend fences with U.S. allies, and Bush obsessed with spreading freedom, the administration's Wilsonianism seems to be eclipsing its Jacksonianism.

Considering that Jacksonianism has been Bush's political trump card since September 11, this is a big change. And it has created exactly the opening that Mead envisioned at the end of his book: for Jacksonians to make common cause with Jeffersonians and turn the foreign policy coalition of the '90s on its head

So now Hillary Clinton is poles-apart from her Pepsi Generation spouse:

....nationalism tinged with xenophobia makes Democrats uncomfortable. And that's where Jeffersonianism comes in. Jeffersonians have long worried that foreign policy crusades threaten American liberty, and they have a particular fear of government-corporate collusion. The Bush administration has stoked both fears. So, in opposing the port deal, many liberals have turned to classically Jeffersonian rhetoric. As a blogger on the website MyDD.com put it, "President Bush and the Republican Congress have shown they believe in one thing above all: the primary role of government is to make the business of corporations--American or not--easier."

In liberal circles, in other words, Jeffersonianism is giving Jacksonianism intellectual cover. But make no mistake: Jacksonianism is where the votes are. For Democrats, stealing the Bush administration's populist, unilateralist thunder would be a remarkable coup. And it would be a remarkable historical irony, since Jacksonianism in Jeffersonian clothes--civil libertarian, anti-globalization, uninterested in transforming the world--inverts the foreign policy of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton

Liberals being hypocrites? Cognitive dissonance, the mind boggles, but I'll give Beinart the last word:

Politically, the opportunity is clear. There's just one catch: Is this really what Democrats believe?