In a July 1995 speech before an enraptured audience assembled at
Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, House
Speaker Newt Gingrich addressed the broad issues of post-Cold War
U.S. foreign policy. His address was typically multi-layered and
brimming with new age facilitator-speak phrases such as "appreciative
understanding" and "complex decentralized system" that normally--and
mercifully--find no place in the vocabulary of foreign affairs. In
retrospect, however, one simple example of southern vernacular stood
out. Trying to explain the vicissitudes of American diplomacy to the
many puzzled foreign diplomats present, Gingrich said that when we
Americans are not excited about the world, we "go to the lake."
The image in Gingrich's mind, no doubt, was that many southerners
retire on summer weekends to their modest lakeside cottages to fish,
hike, water-ski, and cook out. Once there, they refuse to be
disturbed by telephone or fax communication with the outside world.
They literally switch off. And indeed, as a matter of observable
fact, American foreign policy does swing between energetic
involvement and lethargic indifference. Countries formally at the
forefront of American interest--El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan,
Lebanon, Somalia--are given short shrift now that the American
strategic focus has moved on. The Bosnians may face a similar fate
once the 1996 presidential election is over.
