DAVIS: Obama-Clinton: A great team of rivals

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By Lanny Davis

Ironically, this new approach of engagement has at times managed to alienate the left or the right - and often both. Examples include:

• Mrs. Clinton's quiet modulation during her first foreign trip, to China, in raising the issue of human rights and democracy issues, at least in a nonpublic, nonconfrontational fashion;

• The policy of engagement and reconciliation pursued by Mr. Obama's personal envoy to Sudan, Gen. Scott Gration, has been criticized by some humanitarian groups and a few officials within the Obama administration, who apparently prefer a policy of confrontation. However, Mr. Obama and Gen. Gration's approach already has shown signs of progress on the ground in reducing the human suffering in Darfur. Gen. Gration will host a conference in Washington on Tuesday to facilitate implementation of the North-South 2005 peace agreement in Sudan that ended 50 years of bloody civil war;

• Most recently, Mr. Obama has pragmatically chosen to show restraint in speaking out too strongly regarding the street protests in Iran regarding the elections.

On Iran it is not correct to say that he has remained completely silent. Just this past Saturday, the president spoke up forcefully against the repression of the rights of expression and the government-sponsored violence against the protesters. But he still has been careful, despite congressional pressures from both sides of the aisle to be more forceful, while still not appearing to "take ownership" of this grass-roots movement. The last thing the opposition presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and his supporters would want is being accused of being "tools of American imperialism."

However, there is growing consensus on the critical issue of deterring Iranian development of a nuclear weapon. The administration needs to exert more leadership to persuade a worldwide coalition to sanction Iran by preventing it from importing refined petroleum products, on which the Islamic Republic depends.

The second fundamental change from the Bush years is more about style than substance, but in foreign policy, style and perception can have serious substantive results, as they do here. And that is the most important commonality between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: They are great and charismatic politicians - the political equivalent of rock stars.

They have used these political capabilities to win over people on the streets of Europe, Asia and the Middle East - the same people who just six or nine months ago hated the United States and saw the U.S. government as the arrogant "ugly American" stereotype that has caused us such harm over the last half-century, from Vietnam to Iraq.

The clearest manifestation of this new approach has been Mrs. Clinton's first five months of travels - visits to 25 countries and 86,000 miles. Her style is strikingly reminiscent of her early "listening tour" in Republican upstate New York that was critical to winning over even her greatest critics and led to her election to the U.S. Senate. New Yorkers saw the humility and warmth and sense of humor long familiar to those of us who have known her over the years.

And now average people from around the world have seen the same qualities in both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama: more listening than preaching.

In other words, this "team of rivals" has exceeded most people's expectations in the first five months and set a fundamentally new course in U.S. foreign policy. And if the pair hold their ground and keep their new "third way" vision of dialogue, engagement and appeals over the heads of leaders to the average person around the world, I believe they will make good history - maybe great history - for better American relations with foreign nations and for the cause of world peace in the years ahead.

• Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer and former special counsel to President Clinton, served as a member of former President George W. Bush's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. He is the author of "Scandal: How 'Gotcha' Politics Is Destroying America."