Stephanie Cutter, a Kerry spokeswoman, noted that Mr. Bush had as recently as July 21 accused Mr. Kerry of "economic isolationism" for his stance.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, he said, "ended isolationism for any realist," and his words meant a lot when, in early 1945, on the floor of the Senate, he spoke in favor of a United Nations organization.
Indeed, the country's modernization -- the shift in power from an entrenched provincial oligarchy to a sophisticated urban elite, the swap of low-technology economic practices for high-technology tools and the discarding of isolationism for greater integration with a global economy -- has been played out with fervor in the industry.
"We see new calls for isolationism, for xenophobia," Obama said.
Well, if you assume that the public still cares a whit about foreign policy in this age of prosperity, then the most fruitful attack Mr. Gore might make on Mr. Bush would not be for his isolationism, but for his unilateralism.
Maybe the difference in America has something to do with our longstanding obsessions with automobiles and autonomy, with our predilection for isolationism, or our preference just for watching, more than participating.
And we see the calls for isolationism, xenophobia, from those who would call for a rolling-back of the rights of people – people hunkering down in their own point of view, unwilling to engage in democratic debate – and those are impulses I think we can understand.
The result, he said, was a triumph for "isolationism, nativism and protectionism, something we have feared for over a century in the US, and the consequences really will be very serious".
Americans, for example, seem to be hankering for isolationism.
It was not entirely obvious that the United Kingdom would be able to successfully negotiate a coördinated policy response with a body, the European Union, that it is in the process of leaving; nor that the Trump Administration, marked by its capriciousness and penchant for isolationism, led by a President with a demonstrated affinity for Putin, could be persuaded to join in.
Mr. Zapatero, for his part, cannot view his victory as a mandate for isolationism, an option that is simply not available to any member of the European Union.
