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January 10, 2008

About a year ago the Boston Globe appeared to be dead ink, but the Beantown flagship is proving vital in its election coverage, particularly the way it’s utilizing web tools. Coverage of its survey on the candidates’ views on executive privilege is the best example of this:

The study is the most comprehensive effort to date to get the candidates to declare in specific terms what checks and balances they would respect, and whether they would reverse the Bush administration’s legacy of expanded presidential powers.

“These are essential questions that all the candidates should answer,” said Illinois Senator Barack Obama in responding to the survey. “The American people need to know where we stand on these issues before they entrust us with this responsibility - particularly at a time when our laws, our traditions, and our Constitution have been repeatedly challenged by this administration.”

The last paragraph was part of Barack Obama’s answer to “Question 12,” which asked, in summary, if the other 11 questions were worth asking and answering. These were questions of presidential powers under the constitution, the validity of signing statements, presidential authority over interrogation techniques, the president’s authority to disregard international treaties, and many other salient issues. Other candidates thoughts on whether these are important questions to answer:

Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani declined to answer this question.

In fact, Mayor Giuliani, Governor Huckabee, and Senator Thompson declined to answer every question.

1 Comment | Foreign Policy, Giuliani, Press | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Predicting the Unpredictable

December 28, 2007

Some tragic recent events and amongst the chaos, the predictable:

Giuliani sought to link the incident to his campaign themes of security for a dangerous world and that Islamic radicals have declared war on the rest of the world.

In a statement, he said Bhutto’s slaying “is a reminder that terrorism anywhere — whether in New York, London, Tel Aviv or Rawalpindi — is an enemy of freedom. We must redouble our efforts to win the terrorists’ war on us.”

That’s right, time for a few candidates to reload, to reiterate, and to regress.

Another predictable trend: the media’s and the candidates’ new-found value on foreign policy has only dumbed-down the issues and policy debates.

No Comments » | Foreign Policy | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Hillary, Obama, and Foreign Affairs “Experience”

December 22, 2007

Hammering home the point that her foreign policy experience trumps the other candidates, today Hillary presented an array of foreign policy stars hailing from Bill Clinton’s administration who testifed on her toughness and experience. Clinton remarked that an experienced hand at foreign policy was needed in these times if the mistakes of George W Bush were not to be repeated. Obama retorted at another campaign event that more of Bill Clinton’s former advisers were supporting him as opposed to Hillary. His response predictably drew fire from the Hillary campaign who listed the scores of Clinton appointees who were backing Hillary.

Whether Obama really has more Clinton administration appointees than Hillary or not, there is no doubt that a vast number of ex-Clintonistas are in the Obama camp. What, if any, is the significance of this? You would be hardpressed to find experienced Democratic hands at foreign policy who had not been affiliated with the Clinton administration–after all, this was an eight year presidential reign for the Democrats after countless years in the desert. So that may reduce the impact of the notion that “these guys support Obama over Clinton”–for many of them, it may well just be another foreign policy opportunity that was not available elsewhere.

What is significant, however, is that the relative continuity of Democratic foreign policy expertise in Obama’s campaign may mean that his foreign policy would not be all that different from Clinton. Key differences will persist of course–most notably on Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East generally–but these may be outnumbered by the similarities. So depending on how Iowa and New Hampshire primary voters weigh the importance of this difference, they could go either way.

On the question of whether Obama’s foreign policy experience is as insubstantial as Hillary’s campaign claims, a compelling argument being made more and more by the Obama campaign is that Bill Clinton himself did not have all that great a knowledge of foreign policy. A former associate attorney general in the Clinton administration notes that Clinton in 1992 had not dealt with foreign affairs in any way more substantive than Obama, and that Arkansas at the time was an overwhelmingly rural economy the size of Chicago. In itself, this relative lack of experience did not mean that Clinton would be a bad president–and in fact, he turned out to be a pretty good one.

No Comments » | Clinton, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Obama | Permalink
Posted by AAH4

Economist Coverage

December 7, 2007

The Economist has dedicated substantial ink to the campaign recently. A lot of it might be subscription-only, but do try to check it out (and do see what happens when you first try for http://www.theeconomist.com). Some highlights:

I’ve been searching the EightFor08 archives and am devastated that I did not write into these interwebs something I swear I said a month ago: The Economist is going to endorse John McCain and The Wall Street Journal is going to endorse Rudy. Maybe I did and can’t find it, but what is the Internet really good for if you can’t use it to prove yourself right!? Anyway, McCain does get close to an endorsement in this week’s Lexington column:

Mr McCain’s qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he’s a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.

The Leaders section also presents an excellent overview of candidate stances on foreign policy, and provides a scary chart [click to expand]:

The last bar is particularly disconcerting: not even 20% of Republicans believe we’ve benefited from NAFTA?! The Economist (and perhaps I) will let that simmer for a bit and take another blow on free trade that the weekly exposes in a short piece on candidates changing course because of a tighter race in Iowa:

In some recent polls, Mr Obama has actually taken the lead. For the first time, the moving average compiled by Real Clear Politics, a website, now shows both Mr Romney and Mrs Clinton dislodged from the Iowa top spots (see chart).

In response, Mrs Clinton seems to be drifting to the left. In an interview with the Financial Times this week she turned more protectionist than ever, calling the Doha round of international trade talks into question.

Advice to Economist for next week’s campaign coverage: how much will the next US president’s economic policies diverge from what we’d recommend?

No Comments » | Clinton, Foreign Policy, McCain, Press | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Linkus Interuptus

November 27, 2007

Hate to break up this brilliant stretch of holiday cynicism with some truly depressing truths, but these are some solid takes on Huckabee et al.:

I couldn’t agree more with Slate’s Walter Shapiro: Mike Huckabee is a huckster and a foreign policy lightweight.

And this Mark Helperin piece has been blogged about extensively and there’s plenty to argue about in it, but I must say, these two paragraphs are spot-on:

Case in point: Our two most recent presidents, both of whom I covered while they were governors seeking the White House. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are wildly talented politicians. Both claimed two presidential victories, in all four cases arguably as underdogs. Both could skillfully serve as the chief strategist for a presidential campaign.

But their success came not because they convinced the news media (and much of the public) that they would be the best president, but because they dominated the campaign narrative that portrayed them as the best candidate in a world-class political competition. In the end, both men were better presidential candidates than they were presidents.

I would only add to this that with Clinton, we got lucky.

No Comments » | Foreign Policy, Huckabee, Press | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

“A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11″

November 3, 2007

Completely sunk in work this week, I missed the debate and a lot of the coverage. Trying to catch up today and most of what’s worth reading is coming out of London. The Financial Times [might need a subscription...] provides excellent commentary and is sure to throw in the above Biden gem:

…it is historically the case that candidates run to their party’s activist extremes to secure a nomination and then run back to the middle to win a general election, so the GOP establishment may be taking the long view that Mr Romney will come to his senses eventually, if he can find them.

Mr Giuliani’s affinity with the neocons makes more transparent sense. They talk the sort of tough game that is the basis of the candidacy of the man saved from political oblivion, the fate of most New York mayors, before the events of September 11 2001 transformed him into a national figure. As Mr Biden neatly put it in the Democratic debate this week, a Giuliani stump speech consists of three elements – a noun, a verb and 9/11.

I’ll post a longer chunck of that article below - an excellent look at how choosing advisers during the primaries is a lot like choosing a jacket for the debate. But first, more from Britain - The Economist has some numbers and says it will continue to poll thoughout the campaign [click to enlarge]:

…and the commentary does well to pick-up on the real story from the Republican side:

This makes the race for the Republican nomination extremely hard to predict. As the primaries draw near, will voters learn more about Mr Giuliani and reject him?

And The Guardian delivers a nice scare for Democrats on Halloween:

The Christian right has shown that there is sufficient democratic space for movements to play a role in shaping the political narrative, regardless of who the electoral protagonists are, so long as those movements can prove their clout and exercise their independence.

“Some might compare the religious right to a snake,” a Wichita evangelist, Terry Fox, told the New York Times. “We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.” It’s time for progressives to get out of their hole and find some teeth.

As I type, an infomercial for Open the Eyes of My Heart blasts in the background…

Ok, with Halloween over, here’s hoping value voters won’t be scaring me again any time soon - and more from that great FT article:

On economic policy, Mr Giuliani is listening to the siren voices of another group whose time seemed to have passed. They are led by Steve Forbes, unable to parlay his advocacy of flat taxes into the Republican nomination back in 1996, and the like-minded Bill Simon, who lost a California governor’s race to an unpopular incumbent in 1998. At least he is more of a born populist than them.

Comfortably the best assessment of the old Giuliani was provided by Calvin Trillin in his wickedly funny novel, Tepper Isn’t Going Out, about a New Yorker whose avocation is to sit in his car in scarce legal parking spaces, thus driving the city bananas. This was due to be released in the autumn of 2001 but publication was delayed for a year because it was considered too irreverent for those traumatic times.

In it, the mayor of New York has an Italian name (Ducatelli) and very authoritarian tendencies. He wants to be known as Duke (after John Wayne) but the local media insists on christening him Il Duce (after Mussolini). I think the Trillin book should be reissued now as a political tract.

Other pretenders have also attracted some high-profile advisers. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who ran Jimmy Carter’s national security council and has been an effective critic of neo-conservatism, is in the Obama corner, though he is probably a bit long in the tooth to get back into government. An adviser of longer standing, the very smart Samantha Power, now at Harvard, would surely feature prominently in an Obama administration.

John McCain, by no means out of the Republican race, still marches mostly to his own drum, which serves him best. Mike Huckabee does not appear to have anybody notable on board but if he continues to move up in the field he will not lack for foreign policy tutors.

In ancient times, once a nominee was chosen the respective parties would impose policy advisers on him, squeezing out the primary gurus. But the parties themselves are now so sundered that it is up to the candidate to pick a team. Dick Holbrooke knows that better than anyone.

No Comments » | Biden, Foreign Policy, Giuliani, Polls, Religion, Republicans | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Obama Sticks to Iran guns

October 24, 2007

Obama is persisting in his call for diplomatic engagement with Iran rather than bellicose rhetoric. The first time he made this innocous statement in the July debate–rendered controversial only because of the militarist rhetoric of the last few years–Clinton pounced, declaring him “irresponsible and frankly naive.” This time, the specific focus of his criticism is the resolution that designed the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization. As the campaign notes, the language of the resolution could be used to justify an attack on Iran under a number of pretexts.

The sharpening of his stance on this issue against Clinton is a good thing. It shows in a crucial respect that Obama is diametrically opposed to the Bush policy, much more so than Clinton, and that this is a policy difference worth keeping in mind for primary voters. Of course, Clinton in power may very well not follow the Bush script, but her rhetoric shows that she is presenting herself as similary hawkish on foreign policy, and wants to be perceived as such.

Unfortunately, this approach to Iran really seems divorced from reality. Iran is not threatening the United States. It of course has the misfortune of extraordinarily bad leadership in the clerics and in Ahmadinejad, even if the latter doesn’t by a stretch hold the real power in the country. But despite this bad leadership, Iran isn’t bent on a suicidal desire to take on the United States. And in fact it has made efforts in the last few years to ameliorate tensions. So all the ferment stoked by Bush & co. against Iran seems, like the Iraq war, based not on a common sense view of the geopolitical situation at hand, but rather on an unceasing itch to use military force to make other states do exactly what this administration wants. And if Clinton is going to adopt a similar approach, even if only in rhetoric, then that may bode poorly for a future Democratic foreign policy.

No Comments » | Clinton, Foreign Policy, Obama | Permalink
Posted by AAH4

Romney: Competence and Extremism

October 21, 2007

Romney is probably the most competent technocrat in the 2008 race. This Post article does a good job of outlining his varied experience with Bain Capital which he founded in 1984, as well as his stewardship of the Salt Lake city olympics through scandal-prone waters. (And not the least, it is astounding to see how deep his links with Bain Capital go, and how these continue to inform and shape the financial and operational logisitics of his presidential run).

Now, I think many of his proposed policies and his rhetoric, particularly as they pertain to the war on terror, are not just unsound they are catastrophically dangerous. His website unsubtly reveals all–the home page’s tag line grandstands, ”Mitt Romney: True Strength of America’s Future.” Like Giuliani, Romeny seems to be doubling up on the notion of never ending war with nebulous enemies all blurring into each other. He jumped on Edwards well-considered renunciation, not of the very important fight against extremist fanatics, but against propagandist rhetoric designed to scare Americans into acqueiscence to unchecked executive power. With that said though, there really isn’t any doubt that on pure competence terms (measured by prior experience), Romney may well be the best candidate. Too bad his views on American and world politics are even more reactionary than Bush. A functionally competent Bush wedded to even more extreme domestic and foreign policies–now that is something to be really scared of.

No Comments » | Foreign Policy, Giuliani, Romney, War on Terror | Permalink
Posted by AAH4

Worth Your Time, Not That You Have Any

October 18, 2007

Get to reading both essays in full this weekend -as I will - but given current time constraints, Daniel Drezner shares some highlights and quality analysis of both Hilary Clinton and John McCain’s Foreign Policy statements in the latest Foreign Affairs.

No Comments » | Clinton, Foreign Policy, McCain | Permalink
Posted by Andrew Bennett

Forgot About Biden? Here’s why.

October 3, 2007

I’m going to take a second to toss a little Love to Joe Biden who, for those of you who don’t know, is a candidate for President of the United States. This little known fact is in sharp contrast to a little tidbit I caught today in the WaPo stating that between the Mr. and Mrs., there has been at least one Clinton on a televised spot virtually each day for the last month. Shocking.

However, it appears as though Biden is using his status as a Senator (and Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee) to gain a few points on the foriegn policy scoreboard. Biden, along with Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, published an opinion piece in the WaPo entitled, “Federalism, Not Partition” today in response to the continuing debate over how the hell to get out of Iraq. Don’t get too excited…it’s far from groundbreaking and, I will argue, perhaps fundamentally wrong. But hey! At least he’s getting a little publicity, right?

Basic premise of the article: I’m right, everyone else is wrong. The Bush Administration errs egregiously by continuing to support a strong central Iraqi government even as it is now painfully apparent that Iraqi ineptitude and corruption is far too entrenched for the US to fix in the next “four score and seven years.” (Sometimes I like to pick an absurd time frame just for fun!)

Next, those who support partition the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the end of WWII are also completely off base. After all, the Berlin Wall came down, didn’t it? Or perhaps India and Pakistan…Nuclear war, anyone?

His argument for federalism is attractive, although it neglects to account for two things:

1. The idea of the federal nation-state, in a modern era that seems increasingly defined by civil wars and ethnic strife, is obsolete. People are now defining the borders of their countries, and any “outside-in” strategy from the US, who are essentially occupying Iraq against the will of the people, needs to be somewhat deferential to the desires of the various sects who are perfectly happy to remain completely separate.

2. As a presidential candidate in an election year where Americans want clearly defined goals, benchmarks, and timetables for getting troops out of Iraq, his argument defeats the purpose. Establishing a strong federalist government in Iraq, which, by his own admission “has no experience with federalism” represents exactly the type of open ended commitment voters do not want to hear.

I’m no foreign policy expert, but it seems to me that sometimes no publicity is good publicity.

3 Comments | Biden, Foreign Policy, Iraq War Stance | Permalink
Posted by hilljunkie

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