THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The current Republican Party is very good at one thing. Whether in power or on the outs, The Republican Party can shout long and loud about what the other guys are doing. In fact it is about all they can do as they have few, if any, suggestions about what should be done.

If the diverse group of candidates competing for the Republican presidential nomination agree on one thing when describing how they would engage with the world if they made it to the White House, it is this: If only the United States were stronger, and more feared, the country would not feel threatened by the Islamic State, manipulated by Iran or challenged by a rising China.

But after that, finding any consensus on how they would exercise American power differently from President Obama, or a Democratic opponent in 2016, much less how they would define an alternative Republican foreign policy, gets a bit messy.

In speeches, town-hall-style meetings and interviews, many align themselves with the spirit (but not the arms control agreements) of President Ronald Reagan, knowing it is a sure pathway to applause. Except for his son Jeb, they usually avoid talking about the first President George Bush, now considered, despite his victory in the Persian Gulf war, as far too internationalist for current Republican tastes.

And many struggle with the question of whether to align themselves with the unilateral actions of President George W. Bush’s first term, dominated by the invasion of Iraq, or his second term, when, over the objections of hard-liners, he negotiated with the North Koreans, placed modest sanctions on Iran and set a schedule for America’s withdrawal from Iraq.

“They are all having a hard time threading this needle,” said William J. Burns, George W. Bush’s ambassador to Russia and undersecretary of state for policy, and then Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state. “For a long time after 9/11 we focused on military force with diplomacy as the backup, often to clean up the mess. President Obama has tried to reverse that — with diplomacy backed up by force.”

How dreadful is it that they view George W as too internationalist and not as the abject failure that he really was.