Voting blind.(The Realist)(presidential elections)

WE MAY be facing one of the most important foreign-policy elections in recent history. America is not only at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but threatened by short-, medium- and long-term challenges ranging from terrorist attacks to energy security, Iranian nuclear weapons, Russia's resurgence and China's rise.

On top of this is the frightening prospect that, as the war between Russia and Georgia recently demonstrated, it may take only one event to meld all of these problems into an immediate and devastating perfect storm. Just imagine a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran. The potential consequences: Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces and American allies in the region, a new global Islamist terror backlash against the United States, skyrocketing energy prices, a collapse of the dollar that accelerates as China shifts its reserves to more stable currencies and an angry Moscow deciding that it is the right time to teach Georgia another lesson by force.

Whether or not foreign policy affects how you vote (and you'd be one of the few if it does), it will matter, from the day-to-day to the big picture. Past policies-of presidents in both parties--have already had an impact on the average American. Our preoccupations with the Balkans distracted us from the terrorist threat pre-9/11. Failing to develop a sound energy policy abroad as well as at home has contributed to high oil prices and an enduring military presence in the Middle East. Combined with what appears to many Muslims to be blind support for Israel, the presence of U.S. forces in the region has angered extremists and contributed to terrorism. And the budgets needed for global military dominance--and a five-year-old war--drain resources from the rest of the U.S. economy.

Granted, these problems have multiple causes--many beyond U.S. control--but when Americans are hurting at the pump, suffering from inflation, standing in long lines at the airport and sacrificing their privacy in the name of public safety, it is not because of some preordained destiny or the inevitable designs of U.S. enemies, but rather, at least to a large degree, the result of decisions we make ourselves.

Yet if you try to figure out where our candidates really stand on the key challenges confronting the United States, and the kinds of decisions they would make in office, you might be out of luck. We still know fairly little--and what we know seems to offer little comfort.

Yes, John McCain is a war hero. Yes, he stood up to the Bush administration on torture. Yes, he's had a distinguished career. True, he deserves credit for supporting the surge in Iraq early on. And for some time, the Arizona senator was a careful pragmatist. Skeptical of propping up foreign governments and U.S. military interventions in Haiti, Somalia and, initially, Bosnia--in the absence of vital national interests--he was prepared to embrace reconciliation with Communist Vietnam--that is, when it was in our interest.

But McCain, more than most, began to lose his realist leanings during America's triumphalist moment of the 1990s, developing a more expansive vision of the U.S. global role--succumbing to the temptation of overreach. Though his inner circle includes quite a few people of great stature and proven judgment, Senator McCain appears to have his own well-established worldview and to hear, but not accept, their advice. He has moved far down the worldwide-democracy-proselytizing path, surrounding himself with neoconservative advisors and adopting their far-reaching dreams despite their well-documented errors in Iraq. Of course, McCain squares the Iraq circle by taking the position that the U.S. predicament there is due to a failure of technical execution rather than fundamental strategic miscalculation. Others may wonder if there is not a little of both.