COLUMN RIGHT / JONATHAN CLARKE : Republicans’ Foreign-Policy Debut: a Dud : The congressional leadership’s backtracking on support for Mexico was eerily Clintonesque.

Conventional wisdom tells us that foreign policy is wholly peripheral to the post-Cold War American political process. In terms of getting elected, this is manifestly true. No one bothers to make more than a boilerplate reference to foreign affairs in his or her campaign literature. But once elected, members of Congress are thrust into foreign policy, like it or not.

Unfortunately, the peso crisis and renewed political turmoil in Mexico coincided with the turnover of congressional leadership and caught the Republicans napping. This is disturbing for anyone who hoped that the Republicans would promptly restore a measure of credibility to America’s standing in the world.

It should also disturb the wider conservative community. Think back for a moment to President Clinton’s early foreign-policy missteps--waffling on Bosnia, the debacle in Somalia, vacillating over Haiti. Individually, they were not very important, but in combination they created an image of a weak, indecisive President who was ill-prepared for the responsibilities that the world would throw at him. Jumping on this weakness, the inhabitants of the Washington political jungle marked him as easy prey. Clinton’s ability to impose his leadership on domestic issues was impaired, perhaps fatally.

The response of the Republican leadership to the Mexican crisis raises similar concerns. As the seriousness of Mexico’s difficulties became apparent over the year-end holiday, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich realized that the United States could not stand on the sidelines. For all the post-Cold War agonizing about America’s real national interests, it was abundantly clear that Mexico belonged near the top. And so Dole and Gingrich endorsed the Administration’s rescue package, with very satisfactory results: The peso stabilized and the Bolsa rallied.

Then, in typical and reprehensible fashion, Clinton’s attention wandered; he paid insufficient heed to the naysayers in his own party and the doubters in the country beyond. Suddenly, it seemed that support for Mexico would attract few Democratic votes.

The Republican leadership now entered a pattern of eerily Clintonesque behavior. Instead of making their case in the manner of leaders who were confident that they were right on the basis of national interest and the substance of the issue, they drifted on the shifting winds of congressional opinion. This allowed opponents to seize control of the rescue agenda and redefine it as yet another bailout of feckless foreigners by a gullible Uncle Sam.

As they had done with Clinton, foreigners were quick to draw their conclusions about the steadfastness of the new congressional leadership. Speaking in Washington at the end of January, Sir Leon Brittan, the European Union’s tough-talking commissioner for relations with the United States, commented that a failure to move beyond partisan bickering over Mexico would constitute a fatal blow to American credibility. He was especially acerbic about the notion that European and Japanese banks should take the lead on a matter where the primacy of the American interest was so clear.

Certainly, there were technical flaws in early versions of the Administration’s Mexican package. Deficit hawks rightly pointed out that the conditions were too open-ended and did not insist on thorough Mexican reform.

Technical deficiencies do not, however, provide an adequate alibi for Republican backtracking. Conservatives have regularly taken President Clinton to task for the damage he has done to America’s overseas interests with his habit of rhetorical excess followed by retreat when the going gets tough. Mexico was the Republicans’ first opportunity to display their foreign-policy backbone. Those who wish them well as the new majority in Congress have to be concerned at this early display of irresolution.

The President’s alternative plan for Mexico bypassed Congress, minimizing the immediate damage to Republican credibility. But the warning signs are there. Clinton’s clay feet first showed in foreign policy. The Republicans should beware: If they cannot deliver on an immediate issue like Mexico, should they raise expectations on a faraway matter such as their favored expansion of NATO?

Foreign policy has a habit of cruelly exposing the gap between cheap talk and real leadership. Clinton thought he could finesse his inadequacies in this respect with success in his domestic agenda. Instead, both are in a shambles. If the Republicans take the right lesson from their experience on Mexico, conservatives everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief.