When it comes to foreign policy, Americans want a "good" leader in the White House. This means two things, writes Joseph Nye in his new book on presidential leadership. Voters want leaders who are skilled at guarding national interests, but Americans-perhaps more than citizens of most countries-also want presidents to be morally good, maintaining their country as a shining city on the hill. Alas, as the world can see in Barack Obama's agonised, cautious response to the horrors unfolding in Syria, those two aspects of goodness in foreign policy-the effective and the ethical-do not always neatly reinforce each other. Good leadership in the White House requires pragmatism and painful trade-offs, suggests Mr Nye in this short and timely book. He adds that it is foolish to assume that "transformative" presidents-the sort who yearn to remake the world-are somehow morally superior to "transactional" or "incremental" leaders who attempt merely to manage global events for the best.
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