Whether selecting a spouse or a president, doing so on the rebound often ends up badly. Americans were so exhausted from the scandals of the Nixon Administration, with which they also associated President Gerald Ford, that they chose the un-Nixon: squeaky clean and morally pure Jimmy Carter. Thus they exchanged a strategically vigorous foreign policy for what would turn out to be a conflicted and spineless one. Likewise, Americans were so exhausted by the protracted wars that George W. Bush had gotten the nation into that they chose the un-Bush: Barack Obama, someone openly apologetic about America’s role in the world. The result was to exchange an overly assertive foreign policy for an overly unassertive one. Prudence and moderation were sacrificed for momentary emotional satisfaction.
(Robert D. Kaplan, "Foreign Policy on the Rebound," review of The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today, by Colin Dueck, Claremont Review of Books 15 [fall 2015]: 20-1, at 20)
