Huge, strong, self-confidently secure, but with a relatively small brain, this dinosaur rarely paid attention to the outside world until it experienced a clear and present danger. It was not easy to get its attention. But once aroused, friends would get help and foes had better watch out.
Most foreign governments understand the difficulty in getting Washington's attention.
They know about the Constitutional dispersion of power, which tends to blur who is in charge and creates myriad internal squabbles between those struggling to be in charge. Interest groups are the alpha and omega of American politics, and they play in Washington as well as in Peoria. They know that our pervasive media hunger for the sensational. Countries that want to get Washington's attention, therefore, must affect the interests of the various branches and agencies of government with the specter of some danger abroad. The danger must also energize powerful interest groups and thereby stimulate the media.