Republican candidate Mitt Romney and a waitress at a New Hampshire diner get into it over health care. Not that surprising, really, though the media loves it (one of those "unscripted moments") and it provided good fodder for a YouTube clip. What I find significant about it is something else, though. What prompted the waitress's question was Romney going into a spiel about how he'd fight the global spread of AIDS. "What about our nation? How 'bout the USA? C'mon!", responded the waitress in question, 12 year vet Michele Griffin. Later, after the exchange was done, Griffin said: "I just want him to start taking care of us Americans," she said. "You know? Stop worrying about everyone else right now."
And that's what's significant. I fear Ms. Griffin isn't alone. When overseas wars don't go well, and there's a perception of economic trouble here at home, Americans pretty quickly move towards isolationism. Bring the troops home, we've gotta take care of our own and worry about ourselves, etc. We saw it after Vietnam. We saw it during the Great Depression. It's understandable. But it can be dangerous (see for example the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan, largely ignored at the time by many Americans). It helps explain why polls show that majorities of Americans want us out of Iraq. But did I mention this kind of thinking can be dangerous?
