Is Obama's Foreign Policy Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian Or Wilsonian?

Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has a fascinating piece in the latest issue of Foreign Policy.

In it, he sets out the four models American presidents choose from when they approach foreign policy:

In general, U.S. presidents see the world through the eyes of four giants: Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. Hamiltonians share the first Treasury secretary's belief that a strong national government and a strong military should pursue a realist global policy and that the government can and should promote economic development and the interests of American business at home and abroad. Wilsonians agree with Hamiltonians on the need for a global foreign policy, but see the promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy. Jeffersonians dissent from this globalist consensus; they want the United States to minimize its commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state. Jacksonians are today's Fox News watchers. They are populists suspicious of Hamiltonian business links, Wilsonian do-gooding, and Jeffersonian weakness.

Moderate Republicans tend to be Hamiltonians. Move right toward the Sarah Palin range of the party and the Jacksonian influence grows. Centrist Democrats tend to be interventionist-minded Wilsonians, while on the left and the dovish side they are increasingly Jeffersonian, more interested in improving American democracy at home than exporting it abroad.

Mead's description of the four schools is not unique, although his approach to it is livelier than most I've seen. (I have to admit to being turned off by any association of Woodrow Wilson with "idealism." For me, his rather virulent racism here at home negates his supposed idealism abroad, but I suppose I have no choice but to accept the common categorization of Wilson as idealist at least for the sake of argument.)

The most relevant part of Mead's piece is his categorization of President Obama's foreign policy.

Obama, Mead writes, is a mixture of Jefferson and Wilson -- i.e., he would prefer reducing our commitments abroad while at the same time promoting democratic values and human rights where he can.   He concludes that if Obama can pull that off, fine. But that more likely he won't be able to and will end up like the last Jeffersonian/Wilsonian, Jimmy Carter, whose well-intentioned attempts to both limit foreign involvement and promote human rights failed.

Mead continues:

With great dignity and courage, Obama has embarked on a difficult and uncertain journey. The odds, I fear, are not in his favor, and it is not yet clear that his intuitions and instincts amount to the kind of grand design that statesmen like John Quincy Adams and Henry Kissinger produced in the past. But there can be no doubt that American foreign policy requires major rethinking.

At their best, Jeffersonians provide a necessary element of caution and restraint in U.S. foreign policy, preventing what historian Paul Kennedy calls "imperial overstretch" by ensuring that America's ends are proportionate to its means. We need this vision today more than ever: If Obama's foreign policy collapses -- whether sunk by Afghanistan or conflicts not yet foreseen -- into the incoherence and reversals that ultimately marked Carter's well-meaning but flawed approach, it will be even more difficult for future presidents to chart a prudent and cautious course through the rough seas ahead.

It is worth noting that Carter's foreign policy vision was shattered by Iran and Afghanistan.  Apparently, not much has changed in three decades.