The upcoming election has invited more public participation than usual. The stakes are high, the choice is not clear, and so far the polls show a tie. People think their vote counts. So much so, that if the new president wins in the electoral college but loses the popular vote, I expect to see moves to abolish the electoral college or at least change the winner-takes-all part of it.
In this essay, the product of much thinking over several months, I am going to explain why I think that Kerry is the better choice in the upcoming election. It is not an easy call, and I am not enthusiastic for Kerry. Some members of my family put Kerry in the God-forbid category, so it does make one at least ponder the possible consequences of voting for him. More so than the issue of whom to elect, the basis for this decision is my belief that America needs to move in a different direction and that Kerry is better suited for the mission that follows.
In short, America needs to move in a new direction. It needs to be more clever and forward-thinking, and it needs to regain its leverage and moral authority in the world. These are not just nice ideas and this is not a matter of party identification, liberal or conservative ideology – this is a matter for strategic thinking that will have a decisive impact on the success of foreign policy objectives, the global economy and general feelings about well-being and security.
Let me disclose that I didn’t vote for Bush and I’ve never come to like him. I look at him standing there with a smirk on his face and I just don’t believe him when he says something. I understand that Kerry is attacked for being inconsistent but I appreciate shades of gray and am not bowled over by that line of attack. I am also not averse to someone changing their position given new information. I do it and I view that aspect of flexibility as a good trait in a person. I don’t view Kerry as an out-of-touch rich man; his history shows that he worked hard and did not always have money.
I don’t know that Gore would have been a better president and, right after 9/11, I was comfortable feeling that Team Bush was in charge. Let’s go back to pre-9/11 for a minute. It is fair to say that if the Supreme Court had a Democratic-appointed majority, Gore would have probably wound up as president. Bush had to consider that he lost the popular vote and that he had a special duty to reach out and unite a country. Instead, he set out to govern as if he had won an outright majority. His administration launched unprecedented invective at his critics, calling them unpatriotic and serving our enemies interests. If they didn’t have facts on their side, they just lied. In Congress, during Bush’s term they just ran ramshod over the Democrats in the minority because they had the numbers over there. Didn’t even invite them to meetings where they wrote up legislation. A change in presidency would help keep Congress honest by putting in a check against a Congress which currently has no check.
The presidency is a unique position for which no other office fully prepares a person — when you vote for one, you are often voting more for potential than for history. It is a leap of faith. Policy-wise, there is less distinction between Bush and Kerry than meets the eye — the contrast is really between two people and what makes them tick. As is often the case, much money is being spent by partisans with interests to create a World Wrestling Federation match of heavyweights with major differences between them — it’s just not true.
The major power that a president has is what is referred to as the bully pulpit — he has a base from which to make speeches and policy that will convince voters, Congress, the courts and the rest of the world to go along with him or her. The president must be an effective salesman — voters have to want to see him on TV every night for the next 4 years, and he must be able to get coalitions at home and abroad to pass laws and cooperate on policy initiatives.
American Foreign Policy: A Global View with a focus on Bush’s role in it.
At a recent Foreign Policy Association conference, the term “soft power” was used a lot. The concept means that power is not only projected by military and economy might, but that power is also projected through persuasion of ideas and moral authority. America, it is being said, needs to improve its soft power in the world because we live in a global interdependent village in which even big mighty America cannot go it alone. We have to convince others to go along with us. Methods range from scholarships and visas to propaganda media. All our propaganda efforts post-9/11 were huge failures, and it should be remembered that Bush Sr. and Jr. consistently cut the budgets of information services. A big mistake that America has made is to make it miserable for people who want to study and visit here. Tourism and education are good; it is true that 9/11 hijackers came in on valid visas, but at the end of the day you don’t shut down a country and keep out millions of people because 7 bad eggs got in. If the immigration service is poorly run, you fix it — closing off the country is not the answer. We need immigration; it is the key to keeping America in first place in the world. The majority of patents are developed in the United States by such people. The next generation of world leadership will instead be educated in Europe and all sorts of schools are being set up in the Gulf and in Asia. We won’t have the chance to influence these people, and we are losing lots of revenues in tourism and business because people are opting not to come here or even change planes here. Companies are losing out and shareholders across America will pay the price in lower performance. People will learn to live without America and it will take a generation to recover after habits are changed. One reason China is growing as an Asian power is that it is stepping into the void the US has left as it withdraws in that region post 9/11.
Bush was no better than Clinton at recognizing that Al Qaida was a problem before 9/11. He ignored warnings too. The fault was systemic — the whole country was sleeping. The real question is what did he do afterward.
Post 9/11, America became obsessed with a global war on terror and forgot about soft power. A President is not only commander in chief, but also a chief delivery agent of soft power for America. Bush is not interested in persuading people, even undecided voters in a re-election campaign. His campaign is all about firing up his evangelical base of voters in the belief that if they show up (as they failed to do in 2000), he will win. He has governed in a manner that shows he doesn’t care about facts or issues — his White House has been about keeping certain factions happy in order to ensure re-election. I don’t think that in a second term he will be interested in anything but pushing through a program of social reforms of interest to his base of voters. Such reforms will be mainly aimed at blocking things they don’t like on issues such as abortion and stem-cell research and privatizing social security.
A good number of America’s allies have complained that post-9/11, Bush became less interested in having conversations on the basis of mutual interests and respect and instead became so convinced of his mission that meetings within the government and with outsiders became dictation sessions with Bush saying in effect it’s my way or the highway. One reason Bush had friends before he became president was that even if they weren’t sure he had the smarts, he seemed eager to listen and learn. Bush has clearly become more insular, his gatekeepers keep away people who don’t agree with him, and even his campaign appearances are carefully scripted affairs, meant to give Bush access only to voters who are true believers. It’s one reason he didn’t do so well in the debates when he was challenged. I was never impressed by Bush’s intellect and I’m not sure he has grown much in office. Some stories I’ve read about him in office just make me wonder how this guy wound up surviving as the president these past 4 years. If one takes solace from Team Bush, I look at Ashcroft and Cheney and do not find solace in these people. Ashcroft has been responsible for reducing civil rights and costing America valuable moral capital in the world over Guantanamo — for all the bluster over all the dangerous terrorists they were to have held in custody, Team Bush has little to show for it and the whole thing has become a farce with lousy police work and trumped up charges by officials afraid to lose face and eager to show results. Americans underestimate how much damage was done to our image with this Guantanamo thing. Cheney insists in the face of reality that his version of it is correct. Clearly, they have calculated that they cannot politically sustain admitting they made a mistake. That’s their business — we don’t need 4 more years of people who can’t admit they erred.
Look at Haliburton and the Carlyle Group — I see people close to Bush making lots of money from all this instability. I see that a war that most of the world figured was supposed to guarantee America cheap oil has instead resulted in a doubling of its price. The only real winners are the Saudis and the oil producing countries and these companies, and it’s real strange that the Saudis are helping Kerry out by having oil at $55 a barrel just before an election. A President ought to figure that what’s good for America is to wean itself off this oil and that $55 a barrel oil is bad for our economy, but instead Bush consistently kills any attempt to promote alternative fuels. He doesn’t come out against it; he just does what he does with his other programs on education, the environment and various social needs — provides just enough money to keep the program going so he can point to the existence of an initiative, but not enough for anything to produce any results. Sorta like nation-building programs in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid programs around the world.
Toward a New Dynamic in Foreign Policy
My biggest complaint about the substance of American foreign policy today is that it is not dynamic and hasn’t been for many years. Bush had the opportunity post 9/11 to do something here and he really hasn’t. What I mean is that our policy lacks imagination — it is stuck in the past and doesn’t position America to effect change in the world and to profit from it. Examples are the Cuban embargo which keep Castro in power for over 40 years and the embargo against Iran, which has left that country under the sway of unpopular religious fanatics for 25 years. To some extent, America is the bogeyman of the world because it has helped to set itself up as one. Our policy has become a one-note tune dedicated to the war against terror and it insists that the world is black and white — Bush says you’re either with us or against us. Policy is so clear-cut as if simplicity would solve everything and instead it has made America into Target #1 — we are exposed as the root of all evil and have helped all sorts of factions around the world that hate each other recruit adherents to unite against us as a common enemy. Bin Laden probably wants Bush to win — Bush has helped Al Qaida grow over the past 3 years by taking the bait for a crusade against a jihad. A bit more ambiguity would give America more flexibility in the world and leave us less exposed without looking like we stand for nothing. Our insistence on certainty has created the certainty that we are less safe today than we were — I see the world more united against us, no real gains in the places we’ve fought, even more trouble in states that are going nuclear, and no real gains in security at home.
Bush insists on certainty of his faith to guide him where facts fail and proclaims that because you are consistent, you are strong. The problem, as Kerry says, you can be certain but be mistaken. You can say things that turn out not to be true and then you lose credibility and the ability to have people listen to you when even more important statements you make later actually are true.
We have lost leverage in the world and this is important. You can look at the UN and say that since votes concerning Israel are 185-5 with resolutions that do not claim to be even-handed, this means that the UN is useless. But let’s think about it. The UN is not where foreign policy is made — it is where it is expressed. Foreign policy is made between leaders and governments. Anyone who thought about the UN would realize that having such lopsided resolutions is counter-productive. The Israelis look at the UN and realize that no matter what they do, the whole world votes against them. The Palestinians look at the UN and realize that no matter what they do, the whole world votes with them. Neither party will be induced by the UN to do anything because the UN has become irrelevant. Why? One reason is that there is no leadership in the world that offers an alternative to get the nations of the UN engaged to feel that the UN could actually matter. If the nations of the world thought the UN mattered or more importantly, that they themselves mattered, they would become more subtle and try to influence the parties to the conflict. The Americans are not honest brokers anymore and have made it clear that it doesn’t care about the UN or the rest of the world — Bush has said that he is backing Sharon to the hilt. So what’s left to really accomplish — it is too easy for the rest of the world to just oppose America and Israel 185-5 and wash their hands of it. Europe alone controls 50 votes in the UN and Bush has made it clear that the Europeans are not welcome in the Middle East process.
America gives $2 billion a year to Egypt. According to a recent Zogby poll, 98% of Egyptians don’t like America. A similar percentage doesn’t like us in Saudi Arabia and we’re big customers of theirs. Clearly, we’re not getting anything for our money in this part of the world and it can’t be a good thing for such ridiculously high percentages of people to think we are in the wrong. It means we have no leverage to influence anyone in this region at this point. We have in this region a billion people who think America is wrong and that Bin Laden is good, and that it is a good idea to support Bin Laden and/or his causes with their charity and young sons and daughters. Considering that we have 100,000 troops in Iraq surrounding cities and fighting for weeks at a cost of a billion dollars a week trying to round up maybe a few hundred terrorists in each of them, tell me how we are going to continue fighting for years when every day our policies are creating millions of new recruits for these networks. Our policy is strategically bankrupt — we still look like hypocrites backing countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, which are all dictatorships. As long as we do this, we can talk about freedom and democracy but people around the world will look at their own undemocratic situations backed by America and not buy any of our talk or appreciate our money, blood and agony.
We can’t say that what the world thinks doesn’t matter. This is not a liberal idea. This is a strategic assessment based on the fact that the war we are fighting is one that we are not only not winning, but that is being fought in a way that will only cause the cancer to keep multiplying exponentially. We have to fight smarter. The Bush people are talking tough but they don’t really get it — they aren’t fighting smart. The country hasn’t gotten smarter since 9/11 and the world is not getting safer — it is getting more dangerous and we, instead of learning the right lessons from 9/11, blew our chance at the learning curve and have only served to become part of the problem. We are never going to solve Iraq by ourselves, and it is a drain of money and lives that is the result of us being there. The Iraqis don’t want us there, and I can’t find one benefit to staying there as opposed to leaving. Everything we try to do there in terms of nation-building, the Iraqis do better without us. I think that if we leave, instead of the place reverting to chaos the Iraqis will instead get together for the good of the country, which is what I always said I thought they would do, even before we invaded. The goal of America in Iraq should not be to try and implant a democracy — the goal is to assist in creating the conditions so that the Iraqis can create a democracy if they want it as a model for others to follow, and I believe that this is something everyone wants. Instead we have created our own little economic authority that runs somewhere between corrupt and inept, and a political system that appears to be imposed rather than grass-roots. We got rid of Saddam; now we have Al-Qaida and all sorts of other foreign fanatics fighting in Iraq against our soldiers.
I am not going to take a position as to whether we lost Bin Laden due to outsourcing to Afghani militias at Tora Bora. I don’t know the answer. But I never felt comfortable about the way we ran that campaign. I have a hard time believing that we couldn’t get this guy, and have always felt and stated that we didn’t really want to get him too soon because it would force Bush to end the war on terror and declare victory when in fact he wants this war to go on forever because he hopes it gives him a platform on which to govern. An example of how this game plan plays itself out is that making statements that Mr. So and So is a bad-ass terrorist raises that person’s profile in a world that had not heard of him before. He is now respectable as a terrorist and gets more money, recruits and open doors. Zarqawi in Iraq is an example.
Is America safer today?
Is the country safer today than it was 4 years ago? I don’t think so. Apart from cosmetic changes at airports, I have no reason to believe we can stop a determined terrorist. Maybe we are best realizing that we can’t. Meanwhile, our ports are no better protected than they were, and our borders are still sieves. Government has shown that it is capable of arresting and jailing people and accusing them of being terrorists, but get this — since 9/11, the Justice Department has not successfully prosecuted a single major terrorist, according to a New York Times editorial published 10/16. The Department of Homeland Security is, to most observers, a joke. It is a reshuffle of cards without real change and I fully expect the changes at the CIA to be the same. Without a real shift in thinking at the top along with solid pushes from cooperative efforts at congressional oversight (and this means there has to be cooperation among the branches of government or at least restoration of checks and balances between Congress and the presidency), our bureaucracy will never reorient itself toward a changing world. Our bureaucracy is more at war with itself within its bureaucracy than it is focused at meeting challenges posed by our enemies.
The net effect of our war against weapons of mass destruction is that borderline states such as Iran and North Korea now realize that they must first get such weapons and then they can deal with the US from a position of strength. In the meantime, because Bush cried wolf with Iraq, the world feels paralyzed with regard to Iran and North Korea making it easier for those countries to get away with what will become nuclear blackmail — precisely what we feared from Iraq. Bush’s mistake was not that Iraq had no such weapons, but that before the war Bush insisted that they had such weapons even when the evidence was at best nebulous and at worst contradictory. As I have previously stated several times, Bush should have did what Blair did — state that we don’t know if they have such weapons, but that in the present situation of global instability after having been surprised once by 9/11, we couldn’t afford to wait to find out for sure because it would be too late once he grew too strong to hold such cards of blackmail and terror in the region. The Arabs were not hostile to this point of view when I made it in the region in the fall of 2002, six months before the war began. Jordanians were scared sitting in their own restaurants worrying not about their secret police, but about Iraq’s secret police. People knew who Saddam was.
I don’t think that Libya changed because of Bush. Syria should have been influenced to change but it wasn’t. Libya decided after 20 years of oil sanctions that it wanted back in the game, and that trying to get nuclear weapons was a waste of time because it had no real use for them.
As to Israel, I am not in favor of Kerry bringing back the Clinton team. I don’t think they succeeded in the Israel-Palestine arena, but there are other people out there who might be well suited for this. As for Bush, I think the reason he backs Sharon is that he is busy elsewhere and sees no real benefit in dealing with this issue, views Israel as an ally in the war against terror in his world view, doesn’t want to piss off Jewish donors or evangelist voters who are even more militant than Jews are about Israel, and because Arafat has taken himself out of the ball game and made Europe and America not want to deal with him. I think that America ought to be working with Israel and the Arabs to solve the Palestinian problem for many good reasons (all of which I have repeatedly stated in the past) and I’ve said the first thing I’d do as president is give the green light for anyone who can to get rid of Arafat who is holding up everything so that others such as Barghouti and Dahlan could come to the table and work this out. The reason I distinguished between Jewish money and Christian votes is reflected in the following American Jewish Committee survey taken this past September of Jewish attitudes in America: 69% would vote for Kerry; 66% disapprove of the Iraq war; 65% favor Sharon’s disengagement plan, and 57% favor the creation of a Palestinian state. As to donors, it only takes a dozen people to make a difference, and the split of opinion among those who donate is more evenly split. I mention these survey results to show that American Jewish opinion is not what most people think it is and to show that Bush policy is not really about getting Jewish votes.
Jews who favor Bush because he is very pro-Sharon Israel are reaching for low-hanging fruit. I don’t know that Bush, when he no longer fears re-election, will keep the same policies. Second, it is not in Israel’s long-term interest to have an America as its ally that is not viewed by the other parties as an honest broker because it needs America to push both sides to make difficult decisions that they can’t make on their own — a fact both freely admit. America is losing its leverage over this arena after a campaign which was supposed to increase its leverage. Even-handed policy is a term of distaste among Jews but the fact is that America is not Israel. It has its own interests, and it is also in Israel’s interest that America is perceived to have interests apart from Israel’s.
Economic Policy
Economically, the most important point in this essay is that Bush harps on tax cuts and this works well for him. Most of us don’t really notice tax cuts or increases. We don’t make so much money to care. Most Americans don’t really know how they themselves pay in taxes as opposed to others in America; they tend to feel they are wealthier than they actually are, so they respond well to the idea of tax cuts, even if they are for the “rich” — meaning the average Joe thinks he is rich. They don’t care if the super-rich get $1 million in cuts as long as they got their $400 check. Surveys show that the less Americans know about how wealthy they actually are, the more they support Bush. The more they know, the more they favor Kerry’s tax plans. An example here is the death tax, something that truly only taxes the very wealthy and yet which 80% of Americans want to eliminate. 50% of Americans think they are affected by the death tax; in fact, only 2% are. One thing one has to understand about Americans as opposed to others such as Europeans is that they don’t resent the super-rich; they see themselves as being rich today and potentially very rich in the future. Americans think they can be Donald Trump too and they want it to be good for him today so that it will be good for them tomorrow.
I look at the tax cut debate as part of a game of 3-card-Monty. The most important card in question to keep your eye on is how the economy overall performs, because we have more to gain or lose in the stock market, interest rates (which determine mortgages and fixed income investments), the price of oil, health care and insurance, and the overall economy which determines whether companies hire or fire people and give bonuses because they made money. I personally feel that Kerry’s policies are better overall for the economy and most economists agree. I think that Bush’s policies benefit some people but that overall they are harmful to the greater good, and that this harm comes back in hidden forms of taxation that negate any tax cut he would provide. The high price of oil and rising interest rates affect more people than tax cuts; the housing bubble which will pop will hurt people even more than the stock market crash of a few years ago. The fear of terror now constitutes 25% of the price of oil and this is a hidden form of taxation. Bush’s policies and drumbeat of scare tactics (ie: ratcheting up the wacky colored alert levels at politically calculated moments) contribute to this risk factor. Rising health care costs being born by employers who hesitate to give people full-time employment is a reality and a leading cause of global economic uncertainty according to the star-studded team of market-watchers at the Foreign Policy Association annual conference. Team Bush has offered many smoke-screens about economic numbers — the reality is that he has never vetoed a spending bill in the past 4 years. Government under this Republican is spending much more money and running up deficits. Clinton’s government brought down spending and eliminated deficits. The conservative rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. The Republican president talks about marriage as a sacred institution but I still pay a huge marriage penalty in taxes — over $5,000 last year. A $400 tax rebate check each year is just not going to make a difference to me. Kerry can have the $400 — I want a better world economy.
My money has been in cash since just before 9/11 and I haven’t bought one stock since. I am a victim of global economic uncertainty and am simply afraid to make investments; under Clinton I made investments and generally made good money. I made money this year but not because things went right — I profited from the hysteria over immigration quotas which hurt many more people than it helped and frankly for me that was just plain lucky. I want a new president who might succeed in getting the markets to change the subject so that we can get back to the business of thinking about economic prosperity — the world wants a breath of fresh air so that they can create an excuse to invest. Generally, I prefer Republican economic principles, but the truth is that in the past decade the Democrats have in power acted more like Republicans, and the Republicans more like Democrats. I vote for results and an overall package, not rhetoric about specific goodies.
True, we are ever more likely to have very bad things happen around here. It’s just a matter of time. I am not at all saying to ignore threats — I believe in solving such problems and I think that even though Bush talks the talk, he doesn’t walk the walk and that we are not really solving problems and instead are creating new ones. But if you know deep down that you can’t really stop some crazy things from happening once in a while, no matter what you do, then is it better to wake up every day and be happy for another good day of your life or to lie awake every night and be scared? Three weeks after 9/11 I was in Tel Aviv; it was midnight on a weekend and the streets were full of people having fun. I was scared in my hotel waiting for the missiles to come, still panicking from 9/11. They’ve had time to adjust. They also run a better security show than we do. But they have obviously figured out how to achieve balance. Terrorism has hardly affected their stock market over the years. America and Israel are not the same, but their attitude is something we can learn from and it is definitely something that has economic consequences. A President is a large part of shaping this national attitude. Bush has staked his political future on keeping the threat alive because it is the one thing that works for him and that gives him a reason to be president that a majority of people can agree with. It may be good for him but it’s not really good for America’s future.
Why Kerry?
Kerry may or may not be a person of vision but he seems curious, interested in sorting through shades of gray, and he is capable of consulting people and seeking consensus, making decisions and executing on them. He did lead troops in battle in Vietnam, which is more than Bush can say (and I personally was offended at Bush’s attempt to belittle Kerry’s Vietnam service when their man clearly made efforts to avoid it himself). His biggest negative is that he has little to show in a leadership sense after 20 years of service in the Senate, but let’s remember what Bush had going for him 4 years ago (which is even less). His work in the senate did have some important results — he led the way toward restoring relations with Vietnam and led international investigations of terrorists and criminal elements in the financial underworld. It cannot be said that he is a novice in dealing in the realm of the real world of foreign policy. He has some fans, such as Joe Biden, who I don’t view as a weakling for America’s interests. Biden might be a good secretary of state in a Kerry presidency and I prefer him to Richard Holbrook who I understand is a lone wolf type of guy. He also seems to be a well-balanced person who is optimistic and can-do — I don’t seem him as the Carter-malaise type. Bush, a strict disciplinarian with a religious fundamentalist streak who became this way to offset his shaky past of frat-boy alcohol and who knows what else antics, doesn’t strike me the same way.
I think that Kerry will bring some more gravitas and seriousness to the presidency than we have seen for a while and be someone people can and will respect after the partisanship of the election dies down. He is no Clinton, Bush, Dole, Carter, Reagan or Gore. He will carry moral authority without Carter’s self-righteousness and no one can accuse him of being a showboat, air head or charismatic leader. He will give the US a shot at a clean slate and a fair hearing in the world, and a chance at regaining its lost leverage. He proved in the debates that he is a plausible president and I suppose that in the future incumbent presidents will think twice before agreeing to three debates in the fall.
It took a Bush to deal with 9/11; it takes a Kerry to deal with 9/12. We cannot be a country stuck on 9/11; we have to move on. We need to turn a page and create some breathing room for people to change the subject and start thinking happier thoughts about creating economies and becoming a bit less paranoid so that we can spend more productive effort toward growth rather than trying to create a world of total security that is unachieveable and that instead is creating a more unstable world and diverting attention from issues that existed pre-9/11 that are vital to the national foreign policy interest that have never been satisfactorily dealt with. With any change there will be risk; the argument for Kerry is that we are not reducing our risk by sticking with the devil we know but instead presiding over an increase of that risk, that it is a mistake to think that Kerry represents a radical break toward some sort of quisling who will stand idly by with peace beads and the UN watching the US go down the tubes, or that Bush’s tough talk and sense of certainty is the right way to make us safer and more prosperous. It is in America’s strategic interest, in my opinion, that American voters look past the Bush facade and consider a more discerning and potentially dynamic choice in the upcoming election.
