Category Archive

This WSJ poll is about six weeks out of date, so it is pretty useless for tracking the presidential race.  There are some other results that have more lasting relevance.  58% say that the globalisation of the American economy has been on the whole “bad,” with just 28% saying the opposite and 11% declaring it a wash.  That is pretty clearly bad news for the party most closely identified with globalisation at present.  The number for those saying globalisation has generally benefited “the American economy” has dropped 14 points from a poll 10 years ago.  There are as many dissatisfied with their financial circumstances (33%) as there have been since the wake of the ‘01-’02 recession.  52% said that immigration “hurts more than it helps” the United States, up eight points from last summer and back at the same levels two years earlier.  As of mid-December when the poll was taken, 56% said that victory in Iraq was not still possible.  All of the pro-”surge” talk affected the respondents over the course of 2007, but as of last December 44% said it had made no difference and 14% said that it had made things worse.  57% agreed with the statement that most American soldiers should be withdrawn from Iraq by the start of 2009.  Except for immigration, obviously, the Republicans are on the unpopular side of every one of these questions.    

The poll also has two interesting figures on anti-Mormonism.  59% could correctly identify that Romney was a Mormon, and 26% “felt uncomfortable” about Romney’s  Mormonism and its possible effect on his presidential decisions (this was how the question was phrased), which was slightly higher than the percentage “uncomfortable” about his religion in the abstract. 

It’s like this, James: if you push for more neoliberal policies in Latin America, that will magically reduce the popularity of the “false populism” that has flourished on account of the backlash against the last round of neoliberal policies pushed by Washington, whereas if you don’t support those policies “false populism” will run wild.  That’s clear, isn’t it?

Compassionate conservatism was, in practice, nothing more than spin and a vague gesture at a higher-order justification for corruption. ~Matt Yglesias

Speaking as someone who viewed “compassionate conservatism” as something more than spin, I would note that from a conservative perspective the first term proposals of “compassionate conservatism,” whether NCLB or the “faith-based initiatives” or something else, were a form of corruption all their own–a corruption of schools on the one hand, and a corruption of churches and charities on the other.  But to divide the high Gersonian rhetoric from the corruption and policy disasters of the Bush years is a mistake that allows both to escape from real censure much too easily.  Gersonism facilitates corruption, because it breeds a sense of entitlement and a loss of restraint in how power and resources are used.  Gersonism almost has to lead to policy disasters, because its assessment of ends and means is horribly wrong.  Fundamental to the entire project is an unreflective optimism and self-confidence that says, “I know I’m trying to save the world (and I will save the world), and anyone who doesn’t appreciate that is a moral monster.”  The obvious danger with self-appointed revolutionary transformers of the world is that the only thing they see more clearly than the rightness of their own view is the depravity of their foes, which makes for the perfect recipe for fanaticism and abuse of power.

This is the trouble that both cynics and progressives have in trying to make sense of Bush.  People will assume that he is using “compassion” and “democracy” talk as cynical cover for something else or that he’s cloaking his allegedly deep right-wing commitments (ha!) beneath a lot of talk about government moving to assist hurting people.  What is difficult for Bush’s critics, myself included, to appreciate is just how obliviously sincere they are that they think they really are caring for people and helping people by laying waste to their countries, imposing absurd unfunded mandates on their schools, frittering money away on feel-good foreign aid projects that leads directly to more corruption abroad, etc.  They feel they are doing good, and so the consequences do not concern them, which is probably why they apparently give so little thought to consequences and the possibility that things will go awry.

Romney told the crowd of roughly 150 at the Jorge Mas Canosa youth center that he ‘’would never give money to Fidel Castro'’ — prompting a swell of cheers. ~The Miami Herald

Perhaps I haven’t been following Florida politics as closely as I thought I was–is there a live controversy about subsidies for Castro that has eluded my attention?  Now that Liz Cheney is advising him on foreign policy, perhaps he can also pledge that he will not fund Bashar Al-Assad.  Before Cuban-American voters get too swept up in these bold promises of not funding Castro (that’s some bold leadership for America, Mitt!), I would remind them that this is the same master of the pander who insisted that patria o muerte, vinceremos! was a wonderful, patriotic message that free Cubans should “reclaim” as their own.  Who let the dogs out, indeed. 

Watch out, Romney supporters: Liz Cheney, fresh from badly advising Fred Thompson on foreign affairs, is backing your candidate.  It’s only a matter of time before the cold, creeping touch of Matalin follows and brings political doom with it.  In the endorsement race, McCain has picked up nods from two popular Floridian politicians who endorsed him out of annoyance with Romney’s sleeve-tugging, and Romney has the support of…Liz Cheney.  Those who have proposed that Romney represents some meaningful break with the Bush administration in foreign affairs might want to reconsider that view.

Despite this, Mandell Ganchrow, a former Orthodox Union president and longtime leader of a major pro-Israel political action committee, recently posted an item on his Web site suggesting Obama’s early exposure to Islam could make him a danger to Israel.

“In the Jewish religion when someone is far away from observance, however at a certain time he has a spark of Jewishness, we call it a ‘pintele Yid’ — a smattering, or a deep-seated unconscious attachment to one’s roots,” Ganchrow wrote. “With a Muslim father, and being surrounded in his early youth in a Muslim environment, is there such a thing as a ‘pintele Muslim,’ with deep-seated feelings which could color decisions re: terrorism and the Middle East?” ~The Jewish Week

Via Sullivan

This wouldn’t be quite so ludicrous if Obama had ever shown the slighest hint of disagreeing with most U.S. policies in the Near East and had ever gone beyond beyond standard left-liberal criticisms of the treatment of Palestinians.  Of course, except for Iraq (which a rather large number of non-Muslims who actually knew something about the Near East also opposed), he hasn’t.  I have argued before that this perception of an affinity for Muslims or attachment to the Islamic world would hurt him politically, and that it was crazy for him and his supporters to keep emphasising his foreign roots and attachments.  Whatever else you want to say about this, it really isn’t a vote-getter. 

I would like to use some of my personal history to explore just how ridiculous this line of criticism of Obama is.  First, as any long-time readers know, I am not a fan of Obama and I think he would make a terrible President.  The problem with his foreign policy views is not that they are too passive or “friendly” (or whatever counts as a grave sin in the eyes of such people) to Near Eastern and Islamic countries, but that he is essentially indistinguishable from the foreign policy consensus views of Washington, except when he overcompensates out of fear of looking “weak” by proposing sending American forces into Pakistan whether or not Islamabad agrees.  In other words, when he isn’t being merely conventional, he may be more dangerous than the people we have in power now.  This is not the result of his family background or upbringing, but a result of his inexperience and his misguided ideas about the U.S. role in the world that many of his colleagues share. 

As has been brought up elsewhere, for a very short time (about six months) I professed Islam (albeit pretty idiosyncratically–I doubt if my “conversion” would have ever been recognised as a proper one), mostly out of an attraction at the time to a somewhat coherent monotheism that was neither Jewish nor Christian, since I had been raised with no real religious education and had been conditioned by my multiculti private schools to an aversion to Christianity about whose teachings I knew relatively little and which I understood even less.  After a few years of syncretistic dabbling in various religious literatures, I came to Islam, mostly through the English translations of Rumi and the like, but rather like the dabbling before it this was not, on reflection, a serious conversion and it was one I could never enter into fully.  (Incidentally, anyone who would like to make more out of this than that is wasting his time.)  In a way slightly similar to Obama’s conversion to Christianity, I approached Orthodoxy at first intellectually that then became more firmly grounded in a practicing Orthodox parish.  So while I have no sympathy with Obama’s politics, I have found the persistent effort to label him falsely as a Muslim or crypto-Muslim, when he very definitely decided, as I did, to become a Christian (however liberal a denomination he may have joined), and the credulity of stupid voters to believe this falsehood, to be obnoxious.  There are dozens of reasons not to support Obama.  But the problem is not that he was raised for a few years in Indonesia with an Indonesian step-father or that his grandfather was a Muslim, but that he actually claims that living for a few years in Indonesia in his youth and having a Kenyan grandmother still living in a village in Kenya give him relevant foreign policy experience.  The problem is not where he grew up, but that he is substituting a kind of symbolic capital for expertise.   

As for the effect of my brief time as a self-described Muslim on my policy views, my attitude towards the world overseas had been poisoned much more by reading The Economist and The Wall Street Journal than by reading the Qur’an.  I had far more sympathy for Bosnian Muslims and Chechens as an ignorant American teenager than as a putative Muslim thanks to interventionist agitation on their behalf.  By the time of this brief Islamic phase, I had stopped thinking of foreign policy as a morality play in which other countries could be simplistically portrayed as incarnate evil.  Indeed, perhaps this kind of thinking only really works for thoroughly secular people who must find their great moral struggles in politics rather than in asceticism and worship.  Who knows?  In any case, Western media reported incessantly that the perpetually evil Slavs were the villains of the story, and that  it was as simple as that, and, young, foolish kid that I was, I believed them.  Mujahideen in the Balkans?  Why worry?  Truthfully, as a result of reading Chronicles more regularly, becoming better educated in European and Near Eastern history and becoming more familiar with Christianity, I began to move away from the pro-jihadist positions of the WSJ, Weekly Standard and the like, while the war against Yugoslavia and its aftermath finally brought me around to the non-interventionist views that I have held ever since.  I base my current views on what is in the American interest and how justice obliges us to act towards other nations.      

If there were anything to this idea that Obama’s experience of growing up around and among Muslims (for a relatively shot period of his life in his earliest youth) would have an effect on his policy views, he would have to have policy views that were not virtually identical with every other conventional Democratic hawk.  

P.S.  Ross, Yglesias and Ambinder talk about Obama and the Muslim charge.

Mike Huckabee recites from the warmonger hymnal, plus weird references to Jordan!  Why hawks have a problem with Huckabee, I will never understand.  Opponents of the war are the ones who should find Huckabee to be unacceptable.

The Republican field (save Ron Paul) marches in support of the war to their eventual political doom. 

Huckabee likens WMDs to easter eggs–Pinkerton, call your office!

“A superpower, if you will,” Romney says of jihadis.  It makes Huckabee’s easter egg remark seem informed.

By the way, whatever you think of Paul’s monetary views, his statement that wars produce inflation is absolutely right and pretty much irrefutable.  At some point, you have to be either pro-dollar or you can be pro-war.

Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race, and so departs the last consistent antiwar Democratic candidate for President.  It has puzzled and dismayed me that so many Republican antiwar voters have backed McCain in defiance of all logic, but at least there is a core of voters in the Republican primaries that has rallied to the real antiwar candidate on the right.  Meanwhile, Democratic antiwar voters mostly divide among those candidates who would bomb Iran and those who would invade Pakistan, all of whom endorsed the war against Lebanon in 2006.  By all rights, Kucinich ought to have been able to pull together 10% of the vote in every vote, but instead was usually drawing less than half the support given to Ron Paul on the other side.  However bad you think the GOP is, and I think it is pretty bad, don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Democratic Party is a party opposed to needless and illegal wars. 

Prof. Bainbridge preaches ashes and sackcloth:

Coupled with losing Congress in 2006, losing the presidency in 2008 will provide a pair of defeats that surely will prompt “attentiveness” on the part of the GOP leadership and the intellectual base of think tanks and academics who helped lay the foundation for the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions.

But attentiveness to what?  There is something frustratingly vague about Bainbridge’s complaint, just as there was always something frustratingly vague about Thompson’s campaign message.  Going back to first principles is a fine idea (assuming that you have sound first principles), but Thompson never made clear how he would differ from the current administration in those areas where it was most ruinous for the reputation of the party and the name of conservatism.  There is reason to think, given what he has said and who is advising him, that Thompson would have been worse and more prone to the same mistakes of this administration on foreign policy than would Romney or Huckabee.  In other words, in the one area where a return to first principles seems most necessary, Thompson plainly failed to deliver.    

2006 should have been a deafening wake-up call to the GOP that most of the country was not with them on Iraq, but that wasn’t the lesson they learned at all.  They decided to hang it all on corruption and overspending, as if Indiana ousted three Republican incumbents and New Hampshire turned into a Democratic state because of Abramoff and earmarks.  Depending on the nominee, the aftermath of an ‘08 defeat will result in slightly different conclusions, but whatever explanation “the intellectual base” gives to account for the defeat they will remain oblivious to the party’s blind spots on the war and foreign policy, and so will be unable to fix what is wrong.  Remarkably, many of the same people who have winked and nodded at executive usurpation and infringement on civil liberties, the ones who mock Paul’s constitutionalism as hopelessly antiquated, are all the more rigidly, inflexibly adhering to the memory of “the Reagan coalition,” as if conservatism existed for the sake of the coalition rather than the other way around.          

As America marks the first anniversary of the troop escalation in Iraq, at least one thing has become clear. Although the “surge” is failing as policy, it seems to be succeeding as propaganda. Even as George W. Bush continues to bump and scrape along the bottom of public approval, significantly more people now believe we are “winning” the war.

What winning really means and whether that vague impression can be sustained are questions that the war’s proponents would prefer not to answer for the moment. Their objective during this election year is simply to reduce public pressure for withdrawal, which is still the choice of an overwhelming majority of voters. ~Joe Conason

This is pretty much in line with what I argued in one of my TAC columns last month (sorry, not online).  As others have noted, the real political goal of the “surge” seems not to have been to stabilise a viable Iraqi government, but to shore up collapsing support for the war here.  Even so, the domestic political effects have mostly been limited to Washington.  Public opinion remains as resolutely against the war as it was a year ago.  Three quarters of Americans do not want a “large number” of troops in Iraq two years from now, and half the country wants most of our forces out in less than a year. 

Ross agrees with James on the foreign aid debate: 

I might even go further than this, though, and suggest that even when these sort of efforts turn out to be ineffective at fostering the sort of order we ought to be concerned with, their effectivness as public diplomacy shouldn’t be underestimated.

Ross is right about the effect on foreign public opinion of even limited assistance, especially in cases of disaster relief, whether it is the Kashmir earthquake he refers to or the assistance for the Southeast Asian tsunami over three years ago.  In this respect, foreign aid to Africa has made Africa into an unexpected success story, if you measure success by how favourably many African nations view the U.S. relative to the rest of the world.  Then again, there also seems to be a general correlation between how much Washington generally ignores a part of the world, except to give aid packages, and how much the people in that region view America favourably.       

However, unless these programs really do help to foster some order and unless the goverments of the countries receiving aid are capable of maintaining some basic order on their own, I don’t think I have to tell you that American public opinion will sour on giving money to these governments over time.  There was a strong and understandable reaction here to the chaos in Pakistan after Bhutto’s assassination, which was actually much less pronounced and grave than the civil strife going on in Kenya, and to the extent that the American public thinks about aid to Pakistan I would guess a large plurality, if not a majority, was asking itself, “Why are we giving them all this aid?  What’s the point?”  In the case of Pakistan, there are good answers to that question, but the damage done by civil disorder to American support for this kind of aid, even when it may be strategically justified (as I doubt it is in many parts of Africa), should not be underestimated. 

Thank goodness it’s Friday–there must be another insipid Michael Gerson column to read!  And indeed there is.  This week, he’s complaining about mean, ol’ Fred’s remarks on government funding for AIDS in Africa:

While he is not an isolationist, he clearly is playing to isolationist sentiments. 

It is now “isolationist” to oppose foreign aid for disease prevention on a continent where the United States has negligible interests, because apparently our resources are as infinite as the ever-multiplying “interests” that the Gersons of the world discover for us in every problem around the world.  More than that, Gerson tells us, Fred has revealed his lack of “moral seriousness.”  For Gerson, governing isn’t a matter of making choices and setting priorities in the American interest, but of unburdening his conscience about suffering on the other side of the world with someone else’s money.  I can understand why Gerson is annoyed–this kind of foreign aid was one of his favourite administration policies–but the reasoning here is beyond laughable:

America is engaged in a high-stakes ideological struggle in Africa, where radicals and terrorists seek to fill the vacuum of failed and hopeless societies. Fighting disease and promoting development are important foreign policy tools in this struggle, which Thompson apparently does not appreciate or even understand.  

Now the overwhelming bulk of the foreign aid in question goes to sub-Saharan and East African countries, where there are not actually very many of these “radicals and terrorists.”  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t violent, brutal militias and governments, and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t political instability in some of these countries, but it does mean that the political woes of these countries do not figure in to any larger, much less “high-stakes,” ideological struggle.  Uganda, one of the recipients of our current aid, suffers from a long-running insurgency in the north, but this is not connected to a broader “ideological struggle,” unless you assume that the “ideological struggle” is being waged everywhere on the planet and can be used to retroactively justify any do-gooding overseas that comes under reasonable scrutiny.  If health-related foreign aid is a weapon in this “ideological struggle,” shouldn’t we at the very least be targeting it at countries that are more strategically significant?  But no, Thompson must be engaged in some kind of “isolationism” because he doesn’t favour frittering away resources on what are frankly, from the perpsective of the American interest, low-priority issues.  

Reading Gerson’s moral hectoring, you have to conclude that there is no logical limit to the outpouring of state-funded compassion that he would support, since to limit it would be to declare someone, somewhere, less of a priority for the U.S. government than someone else, and that would be evidence of a hardness of heart rather than responsible government.  In trying to lay a guilt trip on Thompson for expressing what I have to assume is the view of a substantial number, if not a majority, of Republicans, Gerson reminds us why so many of us on the right are instinctively averse to foreign aid proposals: the arguments used to advance them are usually loaded down with this self-important moral preening that says Americans must be concerned with the problems of people on the other side of the planet and that they are necessarily shameful and despicable people if they prefer primarily to help their own.  This is not simply an insulting way to make the argument, but it suggests a frankly deranged set of priorities in the one making the argument.  Gerson, like Mrs. Jellyby of Bleak House, seems to be able to see nothing closer than Africa.

The requirements of charity do call us to help the sick and the poor (which Thompson never denied, but rather took for granted), but what Gerson is talking about is almost the opposite and negation of charity.  Invoking the tradition in Christendom of public authorities providing for the poor, Gerson implicitly takes for granted that the United States government has the same obligation to provide for the poor of other continents that it may have for its own citizens, which suggests that he thinks that our government is the public authority for all the world.  Abandoning persuasion, the redistributionist resorts to coercion to send money to whatever cause he believes is most deserving, and here Gerson is no different.  This is his “heroic conservatism,” which does not conserve much of anything but fancies itself very heroic for wasting things that belong to other people.  As sure as public money always tends to drive out private money, foreign aid spending, when it is not misappropriated by the receiving government, will tend to reduce and limit the extent of private philanthropy dedicated to a particular country or problem.  It might just be that the public policy Gerson supports will ultimately hamper the development of private institutional and charitable support and so perpetuate dependency on this aid indefinitely.  As with so many proposals of state support, the helping hand of government, even when offered in good faith and with the best of intentions, can have a long-term crippling effect on the recipients who are “benefiting” from the aid.  

Update: James makes the much more cogent case for ths kind of aid on the grounds of promoting or preserving stability and social order in these countries.  It still seems debatable to me that doing this is the U.S. government’s responsibility or that the stability of Uganda or other such African nations should be a priority of our government, but this is the only kind of argument for this aid that will persuade and it is the just about the only kind of argument for it that can be defended coherently.  That said, Peter makes the good pragmatic case against the actual aid program that the government has.  Before throwing money to corrupt governments, it would be wise to know whether the money will ever assist the people for whom it is being donated.  Americans generally and conservatives in particular would have far fewer objections to foreign aid if there was much confidence that the money would not be wasted or stolen, and that it would accomplish the things that the government says that it will.  In principle, containing the spread of disease strikes me as a far more useful and humane use of our resources than invading and occupying other countries that pose no threat to us, but there need to be cogent arguments as to why we should focus on one region rather than another and why our government is the one that should be doing this.  Given the current state of the federal government’s finances, I’m not sure that we can afford to keep throwing good money after mostly bad on programs that are being minimally effective. 

Roger Cohen repeats a meme that has been getting on my nerves, especially since McCain did better among antiwar voters than among supporters of the war, who voted for Romney in both New Hampshire and Michigan:

McCain was politically dead six months ago, his campaign undone by his backing of President Bush’s Iraq policy. His remarkable resurgence, which has put him in the lead among Republican candidates, according to recent polls, is one measure of the Iraq shift.

This first sentence is a complete media fantasy.  His campaign was undone by his support for the immigration bill last summer.  Opponents of the war in the mainstream press don’t like McCain’s position on the war and so conclude that this must be what has brought him down, but they are judging the war’s popularity by the entire population, continually neglecting to note that most Republicans still support it.  It wasn’t as if he was terribly popular with conservatives before the immigration bill, but that pushed a lot of people away from him and destroyed his status as the “next-in-line” nominee.  Also, his “remarkable resurgence” was tied to his victory in New Hampshire, which had to do with his personal popularity in New Hampshire that has endured since 2000 and his ability to attract independent voters.  Public opinion about the success of the “surge” hasn’t changed very much, so it is difficult to trace McCain’s resurgence to anything Iraq-related.  If his resurgence were a result of getting credit for his position on Iraq, he ought to be winning most of the war supporters rather than a plurality of the opponents, wouldn’t you say?

An agreement spanning hard-line Shia Muslims, secularists and Sunni representatives set the outlines for a broad-based alliance capable of mounting a parliamentary challenge to the ruling coalition led by the prime minister Nouri al-Malaki.

A shared platform welded together the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the moderate former prime minister Ayad Allawi and even a Sunni leader, Salah al-Mutlak.

A statement said the parties would resist proposals to grant regional governments control over oil resources and push for the abandonment of a referendum on the disputed city of Kirkuk. ~The Daily Telegraph

When the administration has pressed for Iraqi political reconciliation, I do not think this is what they had in mind.  Now, in addition to the fractiousness within the government and the reluctance of Maliki to press very hard on these measures, there is an organised bloc dedicated to thwarting the legislative agenda that the “surge” was supposed to make possible. 

On MTP Clinton reasonably questioned Obama’s self-serving story about his allegedly bold and consistent opposition to the war, noting that he has built his reputation in foreign policy on opposition to the war when his opposition has been, at least since he entered the Senate, largely rhetorical and bereft of leadership before he started running for President.  This is true, even though Hillary Clinton has said it.  If you want a real antiwar Democratic leader, you might look to someone like Russ Feingold, who has actually consistently opposed the war by, well, voting against it and voting to end funding for it. 

It is all very well that Obama spoke against the war when he was at no political risk as a state senator in one of the most liberal districts in a Democratic state.  He then subsequently distanced himself from that opposition when the war was initially popular and it seemed that being antiwar was a political loser for an ambitious politician and embarrassing to someone chosen to give the keynote address at a convention that was nominating two war supporters, only to rediscover his previous ”superior judgement” once the country had turned against the war and he was gearing up to run for President.  Because Hillary Clinton is so deeply unpopular with so many political observers, many do not want to credit these criticisms, but they are pretty accurate.  On this specific point, it is, dare I say it, Obama and his campaign that have played the part of the Clintons and the Clintons who have (for entirely self-serving reasons, of course) opted to tell the truth.

I just heard Fred Thompson berate Huckabee for his complaint that the Pakistanis misappropriate our aid money to their military for purposes other than combating Al Qaeda.  Of course, what Huckabee was actually referring to, unless I am very much mistaken, was the problem that Pakistan has been using military aid funding to bolster their military strength on the border with India.  Contra Quin Hillyer, Thompson came off sounding like a buffoon.  Remind me again why we’re supposed to think Huckabee is weak on foreign policy and Thompson is not?  Because he’s advised by the Vice President’s daughter?  Not much of a recommendation.

P.S. I think I have been a bit too hard on Huckabee’s foreign policy views because of his NIE blunder.  He has been improving in this area over the last couple of months.  As I said before, his Foreign Affairs essay did show some decent understanding of Pakistan, and tonight’s performance confirms that.  As for Fred, anyone advised by Liz Cheney is going to make foolish statements.

Update: Thompson really is desperate to go after Huckabee tonight.  He knows that he has to tear the man down to survive in South Carolina, but it’s just not working.

Second Update: Via Ambinder, Joe Scarborough makes it clear that he doesn’t like Fred Thompson’s debate performance.  I think that invite to Chuck Norris’ ranch won him over to Huck’s side.

In the wake of New Hampshire, I know we’re all supposed to ignore polls and pretend that they tell us little, but it seems useful to look at the most recent Iraq war polling again in response to this Jennifer Rubin piece.  Rubin wrote:

To look ahead to the general election, the surge may also have changed the landscape for the Republicans as a whole. If progress continues, the GOP will not face searing headlines and escalating body counts. The traditional image of the GOP as the more responsible and less skittish party in national security may be restored somewhat and the Democrats’ willingness to “cut and run” again becomes a viable campaign issue.

So the lessons of the surge are familiar ones, but ones repeatedly forgotten by politicians anxious to seek safer ground in any controversy. Short-term political gain does not always translate into long-term electoral success [bold mine-DL]. The public in the end will reward political courage — in part because it is so rare.

With all the usual caveats that the election is still ten months away and many things may change, I confess that I don’t see where Rubin is getting this impression that the “surge” stands to benefit the GOP.  Obviously, “surge” supporters hope that it does, and anything is possible, but there is little reason to think that it has had any meaningful impact on public opinion about the war.  On the surface, yes, McCain is doing better (because he won in a state he had won eight years ago, though with almost 30,000 fewer voters this time), while bizarrely losing to Romney among strong supporters of the war 44-23%.  Huckabee has probably temporarily benefited in the GOP primaries from being unequivocally for the “surge” while Romney was more skeptical about its success, but this may, in fact, prove to be a liability should he win the nomination.  It is worth noting that Romney’s very modest skepticism and caution actually put him closer to the majority of the country than does McCain’s mantra “we are winning.”  McCain’s best electoral asset seems to be that he wins the votes of Republican war opponents, as he did in New Hampshire, in spite of his close identification with the war–this is probably a function of the weakness of Republican war opponents’ opposition rather than McCain’s ability to appeal to those on the other side of the debate.  It seems implausible that non-Republican war opponents will be as willing to support him.

In the NBC/WSJ poll from Dec. 14-17, opposition to the war remained as strong as ever.  63% disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war.  That would have to include, as of last month, the “surge” as well as everything that came before.  56% believe victory is not still possible.  44% believe the “surge” has made no difference, and 14% believe that it has made things worse.  These numbers are virtually unchanged from earlier months.  57% want to remove most troops by 2009.  In a Dec. 16-19 ABC News poll, 62% say they believe was not worth fighting.  More recent polling by Rasmussen from Jan. 2-3 tells us that 51% believe the war will be judged a failure in the long-term, and only 34% believe that things will improve over the next six months (this group includes 61% of Republicans, but only a fifth of Democrats and a quarter of “other”).  Barring fairly major shifts in public opinion in coming months, the relative military gains of the “surge” seem to have had no effect whatever on opinions about the war.  Since several polls last month showed that the public had more confidence in the Democrats on the Iraq war, it is not at all clear where anyone would get the idea that the “surge” is helping the GOP electorally.

Jim Antle has a very good article on “The Paleocon Dilemma” in the current TAC, and he outlines three tactical approaches that dissident conservatives have been pursuing:

Some paleoconservatives prefer to work within the mainstream movement, hoping to take it back from those they view as squatters.  Others believe that movement is either too far gone, or was fatally flawed from the beginning, and instead seek to forge a “real Right” that will supplant mainstream conservatism.  A third group believes that changing American foreign policy should take precedence over all other ideological concerns and therefore favors the creation of a Left-Right anti-neoconservative coalition.

Ron Paul is the obvious candidate for paleos, and, as Jim notes, in Paul’s campaign ”there are elements of all three approaches—each of which has obvious flaws.”  It remains an open question whether Paul’s campaign is the beginning of a new effort to “recapture” the movement from within, or marks the last attempt to work within the party and the movement before paleos completely reject this first approach.  I have some thoughts on this question, but I am saving them for my next column.  I am personally most inclined to the second approach, even as I am acutely aware of the limitations and problems of that route.  I can see some ad hoc value in the third, but the third approach has a number of even more serious problems. 

Depending on the degree of one’s disaffection, the Bush Era has either transformed the movement into something awful or it has simply revealed internal flaws that have been there for a long time.  Certainly, I think the administration has done grave, probably irreparable, damage to the movement and to the reputation of conservatism in this country.  As I think Sullivan said recently, Bush has managed to betray and discredit conservatism at the same time, which is far worse than his father’s indifference to the movement’s priorities and his moderate Republican proclivity to make deals with the left.  Unlike his father, Bush effectively redefined conservatism in the eyes of most Americans as center-left meliorism at home and Wilsonian interventionism abroad.  Depressingly, it has mostly been the first part of this redefinition that has generated the most movement opposition, while it is the latter that has probably done more damage to our country and more harm to the credibility of conservatives on vital policy questions.  However, I also think that Bush could never have done what he did had the movement and party not been so acquiescent and willing to yield.

If foreign policy is the area in which the most damaging changes have occurred, it would seem reasonable that an alliance to counteract neoconservative influence on foreign policy would be most urgent and desirable, at least in the short term.  That is the rationale for the third approach mentioned above, and it is initially an attractive one.  But the third approach has two problems beyond the one that Jim mentioned (”all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing become left-wing over time”).  The first is that it has very little chance of succeeding.  Divorced from some significant power base and/or voting bloc, a coalition organised around a foreign policy agenda would be extremely unstable and would would not be able to draw much support beyond the relatively small numbers of progressives and conservatives who have found some way to cooperate in opposition to this particular war.  If it grew it numbers, it would become increasingly fissiparous because of the limited number of goals holding the coalition together.  As a generically anti-neoconservative coalition, it would have a broader appeal and could conceivably include realists and internationalists of various stripes, but within that coalition you would continually have friction between those internationalists and the non-interventionists.  The latter would not see many sharp distinctions between the “multilateralists” who supported Kosovo but opposed Iraq and the neocons (perhaps because there are not many real distinctions), while the former would continually be frustrated by right non-interventionists’ opposition to the U.N. and any international treaty that was seen as a threat to national sovereignty.  The candidacy of Obama is a good case in point illustrating this divide: many progressives who are against the Iraq war are nonetheless not terribly concerned about the insane, overreaching, hubristic nature of Obama’s overall foreign policy or his support for Israel’s war in Lebanon, while the antiwar Right sees very little about Obama to admire.  Where some starry-eyed antiwar progressives (and perhaps even a few conservatives) see Obama representing a dramatic change in how the world will see America, we see someone who believes the U.S. has the right and indeed obligation, justified by our limitless security interests that are “inextricably” linked to everyone else’s security interests, to intervene anywhere and everywhere, guaranteeing more of the same disastrously arrogant treatment of other states. 

The second and perhaps more significant problem is that it subordinates all domestic policy priorities and disputes to the goal of agreeing on changing U.S. foreign policy, which most of the constituent parts of this coalition would find deeply dissatisfying in many ways.  It seems improbable that people who aready dislike the compromises required by the current Democratic and Republican coalitions would be likely to ally with others even farther from them in domestic politics.  Personally, I see some substantial common ground between paleos and greens, but the number of paleos and greens who see this same common ground is even smaller than the already rather small numbers of both groups.   While most right non-interventionists see their foreign policy views as the logical extension of their general anti-statism and constitutionalism, which puts them at odds with the welfare state, many of the progressives in this coalition would want to pursue expansions of the state in the name of social justice.  Those on the right who chafed at the conservative movement’s acquiescence to a massive federal bureaucracy during the Cold War and in the decades since 1991 are unlikely to want to tolerate a similar bargain with progressives in the name of thwarting hegemonism.  One of the reasons that most of us will ultimately not be able to go along with such an alliance is that we assume that there is something fundamentally progressive and left-wing about the neoconservative project (and further that this is one of the reasons why it so pernicious), and that it is because of its progressive, leftist origins that neoconservatism misunderstands human nature, society and politics so badly.  We also assume, I think correctly, that as soon as the Iraq war is over neoconservatives will regain, or perhaps will never have lost, their reputation on the left as the “reasonable” and “respectable” Right, the sorts of people that “decent liberals” can work with and not feel guilty.  Once the Iraq war is over, progressives will resume (not that they have ever really stopped) their denunciations of the “nativists” and “isolationists” on the right whom they will always make a point of loathing more than the mainstream Republicans whose policies we all oppose (albeit obviously for different reasons in most cases).        

Here’s a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier today (via Yglesias):

When asked about a Palestinian state, Gov. Huckabee stated that he supports creating a Palestinian state, but believes that it should be formed outside of Israel. He named Egypt and Saudi Arabia as possible alternatives, noting that the Arabs have far more land than the Israelis and that it would only be fair for other Arab nations to give the Palestinians land for a state, rather than carving it out of the tiny Israeli state.

Huckabee’s frequent references to “Islamofascism” and now his adoption of an ultra position on the Palestinians are meant to placate the critics who believe that his foreign policy agenda is either too thin, too naive, too weak or too liberal (or some combination of these).  “Transferring” (a.k.a. forcibly expelling) Palestinians to various Arab countries is a curious way to have U.S. foreign policy ”change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.”  Who would have guessed that this meant adopting a harsher tone and attitude towards Arabs?  Perhaps that will be Huckabee’s new mantra: Reach out and strike someone.  Huckabee has taken this rather dreadful position of his own accord–just imagine what he would be willing to embrace once “national security” conservatives started supporting and advising him.  Not only would a position like this make him a natural fit for the “new fusionist” alliance of social conservatives and neocons, but in its injustice and hubris it is actually even worse than the current administration. 

Apparently the cover of the latest TAC has annoyed some Giuliani supporters.  That is distressing.  How will we get on without the approval of David Frum and Martin Kramer?  We’ll probably manage somehow. 

There has been an excessive deployment of the term fascist in our political discourse over the last ten years or so, almost all of it coming from neoconservatives and their allies, especially in the context of foreign policy arguments.  I argued late last year against the nonsensical nature of the term Islamofascism, which neoconservative writers use on a regular basis, which belongs to the subtitle of Podhoretz’s latest volume and which forms a central part of neoconservative “analysis” of the threat to this country.  Podhoretz, as you will recall, is an advisor to the Giuliani campaign, so there is something more than a little rich about other Giuliani advisors complaining about the reckless and inappropriate use of references to fascism.  Their entire foreign policy view is little more than an elaborate version of shouting, “The new Hitler is coming!”  Yet they have the temerity to complain when we portray an aggressive, authoritarian, jingoistic nationalist as somehow akin to aggressive jingoistic nationalists?  Remarkable.

In America and Europe in the last fifty years or so, the term fascist has normally been used against traditional conservatives and rightists who value national sovereignty and who want to avoid foreign wars whenever possible.  Apparently unaware of the irony, Republican admirers of FDR, architect of American state capitalism, have been glad to fling the f-word at the heirs to his Old Right enemies, because we respect the non-interventionist principles of America Firsters.  The depiction of Giuliani in brownshirt seems more apt than not in that he has publicly stated his willingness to leave open the first-strike use of tactical nukes against another country, he has made a joke out of torturing detainees and he is on record (along with most conservative pundits) endorsing the aggressive invasion of another country.  Giuliani is nothing if he is not a nationalist who believes in exerting strength through war and using the power of the state.  According to a proper, specific definition of fascism, Giuliani is not a fascist, because fascism died in 1945 and as a phenomenon it has ceased to exist, but then Giuliani and his supporters long ago abandoned any such proper definitions of the term. 

Meanwhile, on a related note, Michael has been a blogging up a storm during my absence from the old tubes. 

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination yesterday in Rawalpindi deserves some comment, and actually deserves much more than I will be able to give in the short time I have today.  Djerejian has interrupted his hiatus and said much that needs to be said.  In short, I am still convinced that Musharraf is a liability to the stability of Pakistan, as I have argued twice before in TAC, and I agree that it would be wise to watch what Kiyani does in the coming weeks.  With no disrespect intended to Bhutto, I think we have (as usual) personalised our view of Pakistan policy far too much and many now seem to assume that Bhutto’s death makes civilian government in Pakistan unfeasible.  That strikes me as a mistaken conclusion.  If the structures of Pakistani civil society, such as they are, are so weak that a single assassination can so badly undermine them, they will not be prepared for the task of a return to civilian rule in the next many years.  I think this places far too much importance on one party leader and stands as an example of how we routinely misunderstand the politics of other countries by investing hopes for reform, democratisation or Westernisation in a single person, who then is either killed or badly disappoints the people who foolishly placed so much emphasis on one leader.  That said, the current situation in Pakistan is unstable enough that any elections held in the next few weeks would be plagued with violence and be the cause of still more outbreaks of civil unrest. 

On the effects of the assassination on our presidential politics, Ross makes an interesting point:

Our Pakistan problem is a vexatious question, ill-suited to being addressed in sound bites and press releases. But it’s precisely because it’s so impossibly vexatious, and likely to remain so no matter who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania, that the news from Rawalpindi fleetingly inspired me to greater sympathy not for “ready to lead” politicians like John McCain or Hillary Clinton, but for the “come home, America” candidacy of one Dr. Ron Paul.

To the extent that most pundits and journalists are not reacting this way, but are instead playing up McCain and Clinton, any effect this assassination will have on our politics will be determined by the willingness of our media to accept at face value the campaign narratives of these candidates.  As it happens, McCain was saying some uncommonly sane and sober things about Pakistan yesterday in an interview with Laura Ingraham, swatting down Obama and Huckabee’s Kaganesque lunacy of ordering American soldiers to go inside Pakistan. 

If the events in Pakistan have any impact on caucus-goers and primary voters, which I very much doubt in light of the extremely limited attention most will have been paying to foreign affairs, much less Pakistani affairs, they will benefit candidates who appear to understand Pakistan and who have not made provocative or dangerous statements about Pakistan policy.  (Huckabee’s provocative statements cancel out his surprisingly well-informed grasp on Pakistan’s internal politics.)  By all rights, Paul, Biden and, indeed, McCain ought to gain if the late-deciding, uncommitted voters are actually moved to make their decision based on what happened on the other side of the world.  That is almost certainly not the case.  What it will change is the relative kid-glove treatment that all the major candidates have received concerning their foreign policy ideas.  The candidates coming out of Iowa who will likely have prevailed on their domestic policy agenda, namely Edwards and Huckabee, will have to demonstrate some competence on foreign affairs if they are to avoid even more intense criticism.   

The war remains enormously unpopular and major political liability for the Republican Party. The new ABC-Washington Post Poll finds Democrats favored over Republicans on the war by a 16 point margin, slightly higher than the Democratic margin earlier this year and last year.

The claim that public opinion has shifted on the war appears to be based almost entirely on a small uptick on one measure–opinion about how the war is going. There has been a small improvement on this question, presumably in response to reports of decreasing violence and, most importantly, decreasing U.S. casualties. But this shift is not indicative of any broader shift in public opinion toward the war. Opposition to the war remains as high as ever as does support for a withdrawal timetable. And Iraq clearly remains the most salient issue in the 2008 election. ~Alan Abramowitz

Maybe something drastic has changed in public opinion in the last four weeks, but I don’t think so.  If there are larger liabilities for the GOP than the war in Iraq, they are in even worse shape than I think they are, since that would mean that they have at least two huge electoral liabilities.

I’m the last person to say that this administration is subject to an arrogant, bunker mentality that is counterproductive here and abroad. ~Mitt Romney

Where was it again, James, that Romney was “offering a greater departure from Bush’s foreign policy than any Republican save Ron Paul”?  This is someone who wants to try Ahmadinejad under the Genocide Convention for giving his anti-Israel speeches.  He prattles on about incipient caliphates just as the President does.  On any issue where he has put forward his own view, it is usually an endorsement of the principles of the current administration.  Most of Romney’s proposed changes to the status quo are improvements in managing and implementing Bush’s broken foreign policy vision. 

His attacks on Huckabee are also rather remarkable.  In his actual essay, his concrete proposals are almost all the same in principle as Huckabee’s, and his essay is much more deficient in addressing Iran and Pakistan or indeed much of the rest of the world.  Does Romney really want to get into a fight in an area where his experience is no greater and his ideas, especially on Iran, are demonstrably worse?  What Republicans seem to dislike the most about Huckabee’s essay are the unprofessional language and the attacks on Bush.  Certainly, serious foreign policy arguments might stand fewer references to Brer Rabbit, but you’d be very unwise as a candidate to tie yourself as closely to the President as Romney is doing.  Republicans apparently love this, but the other almost two-thirds of the country might have different ideas. 

I suppose one can say that Giuliani also offers a “departure” from Bush’s foreign policy, in that it is entirely, and not just mostly, divorced from the real world.

The news story covering Huckabee’s FA essay has taken his opening lines about the administration’s ”arrogant bunker mentality” and made them half of the entire story.  The blog right is, predictably, throwing a fit, with more than a few declaring that they cannot support Huckabee.  It probably cannot help Huckabee in the early voting that the only person I have seen praising the essay is…Joe Klein.  The remarkable thing is that Huckabee’s essay, while I have problems with a lot of it, does some of what the Republicans need to do politically (balance GOP support for the war with a broader break with at least some of the more egregious flaws of Bush’s foreign policy) and it demonstrates some reasonably good understanding of Iran and Pakistan.  Some of his proposals (launching attacks into Pakistan, remaining in Iraq, etc.) seem terrible to me, but they are exactly the kinds of things that Republican voters should appreciate about this essay. 

On the GOP’s largest general election liability and its worst policy position, the war in Iraq, Huckabee remains a loyal yes-man, so what do they really have to complain about?  His opposition to the Law of the Sea Treaty is red meat for the base, while his general interest in more robust diplomacy otherwise should satisfy more moderate Republicans.  Most of the opposition to the essay, I suspect, has been driven by a visceral reaction against the knock on the administration, as if criticising Mr. Bush were some unpardonable error.  If Republicans are going to make criticism of the current administration’s foreign policy completely off-limits and punish the candidates who make those criticisms, they are going to lose and they will deserve to lose.  My guess is that Huckabee’s foreign policy, whatever its substantive merits and problems, will sound reasonable and it will provide a refreshing departure for Republicans who don’t want to give up on the war but who also don’t want another four years of blustering militarism.  It isn’t the foreign policy I would prefer, but for a lot of disillusioned Republican voters it might be just right. 

Nonetheless, if he wants to shore up his reputation here, he really has to stop analogising international relations to family quarrels.  There is a way to make the argument he wants to make on Iran that doesn’t involve referring to reconciling with your estranged brother or what-have-you.

Update: James thinks the “arrogant bunker mentality” line has everything backwards–it is the administration’s enthusiasm muck about in the rest of the world that is the problem.  That’s true, but it doesn’t entirely rule out something like the mentality to which Huckabee is referring.  If I understood him right, the mentality in question is one that believes that the world is unipolar, we are indispensable and must be involved in everyone else’s business, but which also thinks that we are under dire threat from tinpot dictatorships on the other side of the planet.  The first part is the arrogance, and the second is the bunker mentality, and the administration displays elements of both.  Indeed it justifies its activist foreign policy in terms of its paranoia about overblown foreign threats.  Obviously, there must be a much, much better way to say it than he did (as with so many things Huckabeean), but there is something to this critique.

Philip Klein is also right that there is something in the essay to alienate all factions (conversely, there is something in the speech to reassure most factions).  It is true that it is incoherent, but that is what you will get when you are a candidate trying to shore up a pro-war base with a foreign policy that isn’t simply a reiteration of what we have now.  When every feint in the direction of realism is greeted by hostility, it will not be surprising that the would-be realist has to keep zig-zagging with promises to invade Pakistan and reject the Law of the Sea right after he denounces arrogance and the “bunker mentality.”  Also, the critique that he is proposing “a foreign aid program that would make Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society look like a trivial domestic initiative” must also be aimed at Romney, who proposed something very similar in his FA essay:

 I envision that the summit would lead to the creation of a Partnership for Prosperity and Progress: a coalition of states that would assemble resources from developed nations and use them to support public schools (not Wahhabi madrasahs), microcredit and banking, the rule of law, human rights, basic health care, and free-market policies in modernizing Islamic states. These resources would be drawn from public and private institutions and from volunteers and nongovernmental organizations.  

Huckabee’s Foreign Affairs essay appears to be a rehash of the speech he gave at CSIS several months ago.  The people who hated that speech because it talked about containing Iran (one of Huckabee’s better ideas) will probably also hate this essay.  As I said about that speech, there are a few things that interventionists will reject (but they will reject them fiercely), a few things realists might find acceptable and virtually nothing that a non-interventionist would like. The entire essay is something of a grab-bag and reads very unevenly.  It has its moments, and it remains the case that his foreign policy views are much more substantive than conservative media outlets have acknowledged, but it still needs some work.  (The sections on Russia are not nearly detailed enough, and there is no attention paid to China, India or Latin America.) 

Once again, he supports the Powell Doctrine.  He also mentions Shinseki by name, which is one of those things that Republican loyalists hate.  

Huckabee said:

The first thing I will do as president is send Congress my comprehensive plan for achieving energy independence within ten years of my inauguration. We will explore, we will conserve, and we will pursue all types of alternative energy: nuclear, wind, solar, ethanol, hydrogen, clean coal, biomass, and biodiesel. 

I am reminded of Brownback’s pledge to cure cancer in ten years.  There is nothing necessarily wrong with this proposal, but you have to know that it’s going to take longer than ten years to develop our own sources to replace all foreign sources of energy.  That said, this is a big step up from his “no more valuable than their sand” line that he always uses about the Saudis, which is probably a great crowd-pleaser but which confirms in the minds of an informed audience that he is trivial.  Like Romney, he wants to expand the intelligence services and the armed forces. 

He admits the obvious about the strain on the military:

We still do not have enough troops in Afghanistan and are losing hard-won gains there as foreign fighters pour in and the number of Iraq-style suicide attacks increases. Our current active armed forces simply are not large enough. We have relied far too heavily on the National Guard and the Reserves and worn them out.

He then promises a huge increase in government spending:

Right now, we spend about 3.9 percent of our GDP on defense, compared with about six percent in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan. We need to return to that six percent level [bold mine-DL]. And we must stop using active-duty forces for nation building and return to our policy of using other government agencies to build schools, hospitals, roads, sewage treatment plants, water filtration systems, electrical facilities, and legal and banking systems. We must marshal the goodwill, ingenuity, and power of our governmental and nongovernmental organizations in coordinating and implementing these essential nonmilitary functions.

His views on Iraq are standard, party-line stuff:

Seeing Iraqi Sunnis in Anbar, Diyala, and parts of Baghdad reject al Qaeda and join our forces, often at tremendous risk to themselves, has been a truly extraordinary shift. Those who once embraced al Qaeda members as liberators now see them for what these radicals are: brutal oppressors who want to take Iraq back to the seventh century. And this development is serving as a model for turning Shiite tribes against their militants. Despite what the gloomy Democrats in the United States profess, reconciliation is happening in Iraq, only it is bottom up rather than top down, and since it comes directly from the people, it can end the violence faster. Benchmarks are being reached in fact, if not in law. As Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Congress last September, oil revenues are being distributed, de-Baathification is being reversed, and the Shiite-dominated government is giving financial resources to the provinces, including Sunni areas.

Not surprisingly, he is against withdrawal.  His remarks on Iran are, once again, unusually sane, and then he says this:

I support going forward with the current plan to set up ten missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic to protect Europe from Iranian missiles.

This is a pointless proposal, and one that has been nothing other than a provocation to the Russians. 

Huckabee does seem to show some understanding of the situation in Russia:

But I see him [Putin] for what he is: a staunch nationalist in a country that has no democratic tradition. He will do everything he can to reassert Russia’s power — militarily, economically, diplomatically.

His fears of Russian imperialist ambitions (outside of its near-abroad at least) are unfounded, and I would have been interested to hear him say more about his views on what our policy towards former Soviet republics should be and whether he supports continued NATO expansion.  Finally, his views on Pakistan are some of the best and most informed I have heard from a candidate.  That may not be saying much, but it’s something.  Except, that is, when he borrows a line from Obama:

Rather than wait for the next strike, I prefer to cut to the chase by going after al Qaeda’s safe havens in Pakistan. 

This is a very dangerous proposal.  His rationalisation is worrisome:

The threat of an attack on us is far graver than the risk that a quick and limited strike against al Qaeda would bring extremists to power in Pakistan.

Actually, no.  If an American attack inside Pakistan brought about that result, it would be far, far worse than almost any attack.   

Those who have been spreading the idea that Huckabee’s foreign policy is that we “be nice” to everyone have basically been lying to the public.  There are sections where he talks about using American power in a less arrogant and self-defeating way, and he does want to engage Iran, but his foreign policy has much more to it than his establishment foes are allowing.  Arguably, Huckabee is starting to appear as the closest thing the Republicans have to a realist.  He is still locked into supporting the war in Iraq, but unlike his major rivals he occasionally displays some understanding.  In many other places, though, he is also just pulling together ideas that have no logical relationship. 

The word is that Huckabee will be getting a big foreign policy endorsement tomorrow that is supposed to shore up his (non-existent) credibility on national security and foreign affairs.  If it’s anywhere as surprising and incomprehensible as the Gilchrist endorsement, I think we should fully expect to see Henry Kissinger up there in the snows of New Hampshire alongside him.

P.S.  The Kissinger bit was a joke, of course, but now that I think about it more it occurs to me that the recent Chafets profile may have given us the answer.  The profile said something about how Huckabee had ”visited” with Richard Haass once.  So, for lack of any plausible alternative, I am going to guess that it will be Haass.  That would be something of a feather in Huck’s cap, but it would also reinforce the loathing for him in the party.  Just consider–Huckabee consorting with realists!  Then again, a Haass endorsement would deflate a lot of the ill-informed “his foreign policy is just like Jimmy Carter’s” garbage that establishment voices are spreading around. 

This is a pretty memorable section from Zev Chafets’ profile of Huckabee:

The price of oil took us to foreign affairs, which Huckabee knows is not his strong suit. He quoted Pat Buchanan’s crack from the 1992 presidential campaign that Bill Clinton’s foreign-policy experience came from eating at the International House of Pancakes. But Clinton circa 1992 — who had worked briefly for Senator William Fulbright and studied the ways of the world at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford — was Prince Metternich compared with Huckabee.

Then the horror washes over you when you read this:

At lunch, when I asked him who influences his thinking on foreign affairs, he mentioned Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, and Frank Gaffney, a neoconservative and the founder of a research group called the Center for Security Policy.

Insipid and dangerous!  What a combination!

Appearing on National Public Radio’s light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis — and she didn’t know what it was.

“I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

So she consulted her best source. “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’ ” ~The Washington Post

Via Isaac Chotiner

Not exactly the best messenger for delivering warnings about Iran’s nuclear program and the dangers of WWIII breaking out, is she?  It’s enough to make you miss Tony Snow.

Audio here.

P.S.  She said later, “I feel like I’m in school everyday.”  I’m sure that’s true. 

My personal attitude, wholly consistent with that of my Church, is that I believe in peace on earth, good will to men, and that no country has a right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country. I recognize the right of no church to ask armed intervention by this country in the affairs of another merely for the defense of the rights of a church. ~Governor Alfred E. Smith, c. 1927

Via Ross

The rights to which he was referring were those of Catholics in Mexico being persecuted by the revolutionary government.  Quite apart from anything else relating specifically to the “religious issue” Smith was addressing, I thought this statement deserved special attention.

He restates this conviction again at the end of the article:

I believe in the principled noninterference by this country in the internal affairs of other nations and that we should stand steadfastly against any such interference by whomsoever it may be urged.

“The Republicans as a whole lose because of these revelations,” said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington. “If Chuck Hagel were running, he would be the beneficiary, but there’s no one like Hagel on the Republican side.” ~Helene Cooper

Yes, we get it.  Steve Clemons really likes Chuck Hagel.  A lot.  Remarks such as these are part of the reason why I am frequently so hard on Chuck Hagel: the man is built up by his admirers into a champion of a foreign policy vision that he has never, well, actually championed.  There is nobody like “Chuck Hagel” in the Republican Party, including the Senator from Nebraska named Chuck Hagel, because the Chuck Hagel you hear about from his boosters doesn’t really exist.   

Clemons also seems constitutionally incapable, both here and on his blog, of noticing that there is an antiwar Republican candidate in the race who has argued against targeting Iran, who has argued against illegal treatment of detainees, and who has argued against the entire aggressive foreign policy approach that Clemons also deplores.  Based on his policy views, Ron Paul is the most obvious political beneficiary of these revelations, but you would never know that from listening to coverage of the last week.  It is true that there’s no one like Chuck Hagel on the Republican side this cycle.  While Chuck Hagel was voting for the PATRIOT Act and the Iraq war resolution, Ron Paul was voting against them.  While Hagel was making critical remarks, Ron Paul was actually voting against failed policy.  While Hagel was making quips about “tough jobs” and shoe-sellers, Ron Paul was about to start running for President and providing a challenge to the GOP establishment on foreign policy.  While Chuck Hagel made jokes about being Mike Bloomberg’s running mate and appeared on the covers of men’s magazines, Ron Paul was representing the dissenting view in the Republican primary debates. While Hagel dawdled, Ron Paul spoke out and acted, and when Hagel started finally to speak out more forcefully Ron Paul started running his insurgent campaign to protest all the abuses that Chuck Hagel helped to create.

Iran is the most striking example. As recently as June, a debate question for GOP candidates was whether they would use tactical nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nukes. That none of the major ones ruled it out now looks excessively hawkish in light of the latest intelligence estimate that Iran ended its atomic weapons program in 2003. ~Michael Goodwin

Now it looks excessively hawkish?  What did it look like back then?  The voice of reason?

No reasonable and reasonably informed person could have missed that the persons most involved in whipping up anti-Americanism were Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac and  Jean Chrétien, all of whom were replaced by leaders far less corrupt and far more sympathetic to American positions than their predecessors. ~Clarice Feldman

Schroeder, Chirac and Chretien were the ones “most involved” in whipping up anti-Americanism?  I guess that means that public approval of the United States must be soaring worldwide now that they are gone.  Or not.  Is that why Turkish public opinion is more anti-American than at any time in post-war history?  Because Jean Chretien said some critical things?  To put it mildly, someone who thinks that a mildly critical Liberal Prime Minister of Canada is one of the greatest sources of anti-U.S. feelings in the world is not in a position to lecture anyone on being out of touch with current affairs.  By all means, oppose Huckabee, but please don’t base on such a bizarre view of international affairs. 

During the Cold War, you were a hawk or a dove, but this new world requires us to be a phoenix, to rise from the ashes of the twin towers with a whole new game plan for this very different enemy. Being a phoenix means constantly reinventing ourselves, dying to mistakes and miscalculations, changing tactics and strategies, rising reborn to meet each new challenge and seize each new opportunity. ~Mike Huckabee (from his official campaign site, no less)

Via Alex Massie

So Mike Huckabee promises us a foreign policy that will make sure that America repeatedly bursts into flame for all of eternity.  That’s the kind of bold, new thinking you don’t get from just any candidate.  You do almost have to admire how this strained metaphor sits awkwardly beside the call for a “whole new game plan,” while said plan is, of course, nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, Sweden should be concerned:

When I make foreign policy, I want to be able to treat Saudi Arabia the same way I treat Sweden, and that requires us to be energy independent.

Implicit in this statement is that he would really like to treat Saudi Arabia badly (on behalf of, as he says, “the good guys,” who remain conveniently unnamed), but cannot because of oil dependence.  What did Sweden ever do to Mike Huckabee?

P.S.  Lost in the jungles of Huckabee’s rhetoric are at least a couple reasonable views (e.g., support for the Powell Doctrine in the event of military action).  Unfortunately, I fear that Huckabee’s national security and foreign policy ideas are as muddled and incoherent as his domestic policy proposals.  One moment he will say something refreshingly sane, and then start barking about Islamofascism.

Maybe there’s a better reason than I thought that others haven’t taken Mike Huckabee seriously on foreign policy.  It doesn’t help that the man is apparently oblivious to one of the biggest foreign policy news stories of the last year:

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday …
 
Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No. [bold mine DL; ed.-doesn’t he read the newspaper?]

Kuhn then summarized the NIE finding that Iran had stopped work on a clandestine nuclear program four years ago and asked if it “adjusts your view on Iran in any sense.”

Kuhn: What is your concern on Iran as of now?

Huckabee: I’ve a serious concern if they were to be  able to weaponize nuclear material, and I think we all should, mainly because the statements of Ahmadinejad are certainly not conducive to a peaceful purpose for his having it and the fear that he would in fact weaponize it and use it. (He pauses and thinks) I don’t know where the intelligence is coming from that says they have suspended the program or how credible that is versus the view that they actually are expanding it. … And I’ve heard, the last two weeks, supposed reports that they are accelerating it and it could be having a reactor in a much shorter period of time than originally been thought. [bold mine-DL; ed.-this ought to discredit him utterly, and maybe it will.]

Wow.  There goes my idea that Huckabee could exploit the NIE to demonstrate that he has the more sober, responsible approach to U.S. foreign policy.  He literally had no idea what it was or what it said.  Obviously, it’s out of the question that he would have had any idea how this might have reflected well on remarks he had made in the past.  This makes Huckabee’s rise take on a new, fairly horrifying dimension: he is wedded to Gersonism, seems to be just as clueless about foreign policy as Bush was and is, and people are starting to take a real liking to him (he now leads the Rasmussen daily tracking poll 20-17%). 

Update: Huckabee has an excuse that is almost worse than the original blunder:

I had been up about 20 hours at that time, and I had not even so much as had the opportunity to look at a newspaper. We were literally going from early in the morning until late that night and talking to guys like you. And so I had not had an opportunity to be briefed on it. There are going to be times out there on the campaign trail, Wolf - you’ve been on the trail, you know - that candidates are literally driven from one event to the next. And it would have been nice had someone been able to first say here’s some things that are going on, that are taking place. That didn’t happen. It’s going to happen again.

That’s great, except that the NIE story broke on Monday.  Essentially, Huckabee is saying that a long, gruelling day of public and media appearances prevented him from remaining informed about one of the more significant policy issues of the day.  If that is supposed to increase confidence in his ability to be President, it isn’t working.  

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