This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times on September 26, 1999. Foreign policy, not the economy, dominated most presidential elections from the 1940s through the 1980s. So serious that a bipartisan consensus prevailed on foreign policy from World War II to Vietnam. Foreign policy was literally above politics.
Foreign policy is back.
But it ain't what it used to be. The debate over the U.S. role in the world is no longer about important places like Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo. It's about places nobody ever heard of, like Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. Charges that Vice President Al Gore failed to exercise oversight of billions of dollars in loan funds to Russia. Charges that Texas Gov. George W. Bush doesn't know anything about world affairs.