I started this from an airport, on my way to New Hampshire to join the horde of media covering the primaries there. Having spent almost a week of being unremittingly busy as an anonymous (except perhaps to Register readers and others who checked out my blogging) member of the horde of media (that herd of independent minds) covering the primary election there, I feel even more strongly. We as Americans deserve a lot more than we are getting from our candidates when it comes to evidence of specific thought about what the country should do in the wake of the war in Iraq. To my way of thinking both friend and foe of that war, at least among the candidates, has been unhelpfully vague on the subject.
To be sure, John Edwards, who came in second in Iowa, a hair ahead of Hillary has said he would start pulling out troops as soon as he took office, with the idea of having all or most of them out within a year. He has even said that he would phase out the mission of training Iraqi "security forces," which brought him a bit of criticism. Most of our vaunted military types say the Iraqis need more time, always an unspecified amount of more time, before they are ready to handle security duties in their own country. Presumably foreigners are better at it. You’d rather have Russians or Chinese or Kenyans or at least somebody who doesn’t speak the language doing policing in your town, wouldn’t you? Of course you would.
There’s something about Edwards, however that would make me doubt his sincerity even if he said there were no clouds on a sunny day and we were both looking out the same window at a cloudless sky, and I guess I’m not alone. Electorally he’s toast. Democrats actually seem to like both Hillary and Obama, who sincerely want power and sincerely see themselves as wonderful people to have it, better than him.
What I heard little or none of on the campaign trail, however, is any strong evidence that the misadventure in Iraq has caused serious thinking about what lessons the disaster might hold for future decisions or future policy. Pardon me for suspecting that most of the Democrats, except Gravel and Kucinich, would move into another foreign adventure – Pakistan, Darfur, perhaps, even Burma/Myanmar? – so long as they checked very carefully and were confident the intelligence was sound rather than being massaged to suit their policy preferences. Would there even be an effort to understand something of the ins and outs and cultural/historical peculiarities of the target country? Such scrupulousness, caution and surfeit of local knowledge were seldom in evidence during the last Democratic administration – though there was an almost obsessive fear of U.S. casualties, which was a reasonably effective deterrent against especially risky long-term interventions (though U.S. troops are still in Bosnia with no end in sight, aren’t they?).
Most of the pundits are saying that while talk of the war dominated the earlier debates, the reduction in U.S. casualties (and scant reporting of those that do occur) has led voters and candidates to think of other things. The mortgage crisis, whose full effects have yet to be felt, along with $100-a-barrel oil and a growing if vague sense of uneasiness about the stock market and the economy in general have pushed the war down on the list of popular priorities. So the incentive for candidates to be more specific about foreign policy is not very strong.
Most political scientists will tell you that foreign affairs are seldom decisive in American presidential elections, even though conducting foreign affairs is usually the most important thing presidents do. Candidates have found that most voters respond more directly to pocketbook issues – "it’s the economy, stupid" – believing irrationally, first, that more active government intervention in the economy can somehow improve general growth rather than redistributing wealth to favored special interests, and second that presidents can have an impact quickly, when it’s more commonly the case that whatever policies they put in place are felt on the ground or in the pocketbook only years later.
And of course presidents often lie about their attitudes or change the minds or approaches when they have power in their hands. It’s fine to claim to believe in, as Candidate Bush said he did in debates in 2000, a more "humble" foreign policy that eschews such follies as nation-building. But once you have the power in your hands, aides at your elbow, legions who obey your orders and a dim understanding that historians still bestow the label of "great" on presidents who preside over wars or are ambitious activists overseas, it can be tempting to use that power, to reach for the mantle of ersatz greatness
Quite frankly, I don’t know how to offer different incentives to candidates, except perhaps over the long haul, if people with different attitudes toward war and crises become historians and achieve some influence in the profession. It’s unlikely that however piously people proclaim their devotion to peace and prosperity, even on the campaign trail, for example, that historians will take leave of the habit of admiring those who deal with great crises (even crises of their own making) and begin seeing quiet times when little that disturbs the progress of prosperity happens to test a president’s mettle as admirable times.
However strongly they may express concern over the progress of a war going badly, for example, most voters will let politicians get away with being vague on such matters, especially if in the most economically blessed and secure country in world history they are feeling even a slight twinge of economic uncertainty or insecurity. Despite the evidence that the best thing the president and government can do for economic well-being is to leave well enough alone, all too many voters think there’s a daddy somewhere in Washington who can take care of them and make the bogeymen go away.
We’ve had the experience this year of having explicitly antiwar candidates operating differently than the usual get-along-go-along run of the breed in both major party primaries. If they had done well, sending the message to other candidates that there is a considerable constituency, out there to be had for an antiwar, anti-imperialist program, that could conceivably have had an impact on other candidates considered more conventional. But it begins with the media treating serious critics of current foreign policy as "fringe" candidates, and unfortunately to date the voters have gone along. On the Democratic side, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel have yet to score above very low single digits.
Are any of the others reliably anti-war or even remotely skeptical of imperialism as a policy as compared to skepticism about this particular war? If so, could readers kindly offer evidence?
On the Republican side, 10-term Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul opposed the war from the beginning on libertarian-constitutionalist grounds and has furthermore argued for moving toward a more non-interventionist foreign policy under which the United States would, as a matter of policy, focus less on bombing and nation-building overseas. Thanks to his supporters’ enthusiasm, of which I caught a good glimpse in New Hampshire, and their ability to raise money, he will stay in until the issue is decided, which means that to some extent his voice will be heard, especially if he rises to double digits consistently.
However the other Republican candidates, while feeling the need to distinguish themselves from him and sound as bellicose as possible – the first part of the debate Saturday night at St. Anselm College almost revolved around him – have not bothered to take on his ideas in any form more substantive than purportedly clever sound bites – "reading Mr. Ahmadinejad’s press releases" indeed! So nobody feels much of an obligation to explain why we still need troops in Japan and Germany 60-plus years after the end of a war and in Korea 50-plus years after the end of another – let alone explain what they mean by victory in Iraq or speculate on how long U.S. troops will be there. They probably won’t until Ron Paul starts scoring in the 30s and actually wins a primary or two – although it’s more likely they’ll stick with smears and sarcastic sound bites.
For many years now I have doubted the efficacy of the political process as a way to move forward toward a freer society. This campaign started with a hint of a promise that it might be a little different, that slightly heterodox views might get enough of a hearing to begin the process of modest changes in the direction of a less bellicose foreign policy. Having been on the ground for a week and a fairly attentive observer the rest of the time, I’m afraid my more long-term doubts are still firmly in place.
