Electile Dysfunction

President Bill Clinton used the word "diplomacy" again and again Wednesday night while was raising the roof at the Democratic convention. How refreshing.

For most of the last eight years, "diplomacy" has been a word that President George W. Bush and his buddies in the White House locker room have made sound vaguely metrosexual, suggesting an effeminate tendency to talk instead of act, to agonize rather than attack. Diplomacy was something for (smirk) the French. Real men bombed Iraq.

As Robert Kagan famously wrote in his book "Of Paradise and Power," published on the eve of the American-led invasion, "Americans are from Mars [manly] and Europeans are from Venus  [womanly].'' And even after Condoleezza Rice took over at the State Department and began trying to revive diplomacy, all else having failed, there was an abiding presumption that those who constantly showed they had cojones, whether literal or figurative, were more in touch with reality than those without.

That tone carries through today in the presidential campaign. Republican candidate John McCain unquestionably and unequivocally remains on Mars. And Democratic contender Barack Obama … well, it's instructive to look at their official Web sites to see what each man has to say about that word "diplomacy."

McCain doesn't mention it. Not under the heading of "Iraq," where it would seem prudent and indeed imperative to talk to that country's neighbors; not under the heading "Border Security," where it might seem logical to talk to this country's neighbors, and not under the heading "National Security," which, on Mars, is all about the virtues of military muscle-flexing: pumping up the size of the military and erecting missile shields.

Just in case we didn't get the subliminal point, there's also McCain's latest attack ad targeting Obama, a clip McCain's team has dubbed "Tiny." The overt message of the 30-second spot is to quote the Democratic candidate saying Iran is a "tiny" country that supposedly doesn't pose a serious threat to the United States, and to suggest that Obama doesn't care if Israel is in the mullahs' sights. Of course this just ain't true, as Factcheck.orgpoints out in admirable detail. Obama actually said of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela: "These countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union." And if there were any doubt about the relative importance of the Kremlin's military today, well, just ask Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his troops in the Caucasus. But you can see why John McCain approved that ad. On Mars, only a wimp would try to put the Iranian threat in perspective, would try to, well, talk to Iran before (or instead of) attacking it.