Politics & Power Quote by Gordon Smith

Bipartisanship is the point here, but absolution is the prize. Gordon Smith frames his Kosovo votes not as a deviation from Republican orthodoxy but as proof of moral seriousness: when genocide is the backdrop, party discipline becomes a smaller story than personal conscience. The sentence is engineered to preempt the cheap shots. He leads with identity - "As a Republican" - then crosses the aisle with confidence, signaling that the act wasn’t accidental or politically coerced. It was chosen.

The subtext is equally domestic: Kosovo is less a geography lesson than a stand-in for America’s post-Cold War argument about what power is for. By calling Europeans "our European friends", Smith gently rebukes isolationism and the reflexive contempt for allies that often fuels anti-intervention rhetoric. He’s not defending intervention as empire; he’s marketing it as loyalty.

Then comes the strategic praise of Clinton. "I am proud of those votes" is self-credentialing; "I am proud of President Clinton" is a deliberate refusal to treat the opposing party’s president as illegitimate. In the late-1990s atmosphere - impeachment, scorched-earth partisanship, and a Republican Congress eager to paint Clinton as reckless - that praise functions as a political risk and a moral flex. Smith is carving out a brand: the Republican who can say yes to force abroad when it is framed as prevention, not conquest, and who can say yes to a Democrat when the cause is clean enough to justify the optics.