My latest from the Guelph Mercury
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It’s become the lead question for morning show and political talk shows all over the United States — what must the Republican party do to get competitive again?

Barack Obama’s thumping of John McCain in November was merely a ratification of a much deeper trend in American political life. The conservative movement has been tumbling out of control since very soon after George W. Bush’s second inauguration, and not even McCain’s “straight talk express” could tug it back up the hill.

Like the economy, the Republicans have pretty well hit rock bottom. Pick your preferred method of measurement: state houses, Senate, House of Representatives, White House . . . the Democrats are on the rise.

Like the smart investor though, it’s all about buying low. Now is the time for American conservatives to begin building a coherent and saleable alternative to the very liberal agenda sponsored by the Obama administration and fawningly affirmed by the powder blue congress.

At the heart of this much-needed process of rebuilding lies one central question: should the new and improved Republicans be based in ideology or sensibility?

Prior to the radicalization of the Republican party, which began in the 1950s and triple-peaked under Ronald Reagan, 1990s Republican house speaker Newt Gingrich and, finally, the newly retired Bush the Younger, the Republican party was the party of sensibility. It was your dad’s party. It was the party of polished shoes, balanced budgets, well-regulated financial markets, and a foreign policy rooted in realism and an appreciation for the limits of military power.

But after the 1960s — we’re generalizing here, but not unfairly — American conservatism ceased to be an exercise in prudently maintaining and incrementally improving the status quo. The status quo was perceived by American conservatives to have been destroyed by anti-work, anti-family, anti-religion Democratic policies which required an all-out counterattack.

And that’s been the narrative ever since. The Republican party has been the party of an idealized past — or of timeless moral and philosophical principles, depending on taste — anchored in a mentality of static values.

And so the economic downturn couldn’t have come at a better time for a Republican party needing to reinvent itself. It is a problem so deep and existential that it could have several plausible solutions, and both ideology and sensibility could conceivably work.

Economic management as an ideological issue would mean selling tax cuts, spending cuts and fiscal restraint to voters. It would mean abandoning Bush’s big-government conservatism, and puritanically pursuing an economic agenda designed to shrink government.

If bad government regulation and too much government spending are to blame for the current recession, a small-government sales pitch could resonate with voters tired of political solutions to economic problems.

Alternatively, the Republican party could return to its roots at the sensible centre of the political spectrum. Republicans could focus on the need to improve the regulation of financial markets, because corruption and incompetence are insufferable.

They could focus on fuel-economy standards and alternative-energy production as part of a long-term vision of balanced budgets, greener meadows, and healthier children.

They could lay out a vision for an America whose relationship with the world is one defined by not only power, but also by laws and norms.

And they could challenge Americans with policies, initiatives and bully pulpits — especially wealthy and middle class Americans — to serve their country in the military, the peace corps, and in multitudinous existing and would-be service organizations designed to revitalize America’s civic culture: the key to what Alexis de Tocqueville believed made Americans not only great, but good.

For now, though, it’s a waiting game. Obama will continue governing absent a meaningful opposition. Republican heavyweights (and Sarah Palin) will continue testing the presidential waters for the next time round. And American voters, mercifully, will eventually cease to view the choice between Republican and Democrat as the choice between an irrationally despised Bush and an idealized and untested Obama.

But until some equilibrium is restored to the American political spectrum, voters and pundits would do well to remember that the Republican party isn’t dead — it’s just sleeping.

And if they play their cards right their nightmare will soon be over.

My latest from the Guelph Mercury, printed today, 19 March.
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After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the George W. Bush administration embarked upon what many have called nothing less than a revolution in foreign policy. Counselled and encouraged by his inner cadre of hawkish, ideologically driven advisors, George W. Bush made US global military dominance, pre-emption and American exceptionalism central tenets of US security strategy.

It’s taken Mr. Obama about five minutes to nix the Bush Doctrine, and recalibrate America’s military goals and diplomatic agenda. Three recent examples are especially revelatory, as the world seeks to understand how the Obama team view the world.

First is the phased closure of the American detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This signals to the world that the Obama administration believe international terrorism is an issue to be treated more through the prism of criminality than war.

Dealing with transnational crime means stepping up efforts at interdiction, and tweaking international and national law to manage those charged with crime. It means soliciting the partnership and solidarity of the international community in an effort ultimately premised on co-operation – not confrontation.

While the Bush administration viewed international terrorism fundamentally through the prism of war – terrorists are the enemy, and the ones captured are like POWs without states, deserving little or no rights – the Obama team believe Gitmo undermines the basic principles of liberty and civilisation from within, and is therefore corrosive to American society and reputation.

This change in how the Oval Office approaches terrorism has deeper and broader implications for American strategy and action on the global stage, let alone on that tiny, irrelevant mosquito of an island we call Cuba. Bring on the second example.

When’s the last time you heard an administration official say the words Global War on Terror (GWOT)? A multitude of serious scholars believe that the Bush administration’s fashioning of the Global War on Terror was a brilliant attempt to deepen and broaden and legitimise America’s global military primacy indefinitely (even if said strategy has fallen out of favour with said scholars and their little cousins in the commentariat).

It matters how issues are framed, and how they’re packaged for mass consumption. Tossing ‘GWOT’ aside is a way for Mr. Obama to not only signal the dramatic end of President Bush’s relatively militaristic foreign policy, but it is also a means to re-frame terrorism in a way that they feel more accurately represents the stakes. Fact is, small arms, drugs and traffic accidents cause more death to citizens of the free world than do crackpot jihadists.

Though the Bush administration was right to focus American and international attention on the nexus of failed states, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, the Obama administration advocate an approach to this challenge that focuses on improving procedures for managing and accounting for dangerous nuclear technology and materials, working with allies and partners to detect terrorist activity, and using American military power more as a scalpel to kill gangs of terrorists than as a battleaxe to bring down rogue regimes.

Finally – and perhaps most significantly – the Obama administration have reached out to Russia in a way that is meaningful, apparently generous, and possibly brilliant. Whereas the Bush administration was hell-bent on basing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) technology in Poland and the Czech Republic – right on Russia’s doorstep – Mr. Obama and his staff have offered to scuttle these controversial plans if Moscow will endorse tough sanctions against Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

This is a serious display of diplomatic ingenuity. It gives Mr. Obama – who’s never been big on high-tech ABM systems – a way to ditch the expensive programme whilst seeming tough on Iran. And more importantly, it puts the US on a conciliatory footing with Russia, whose co-operation is necessary to ensure a peaceful immediate future for the former Soviet satellites in Central Asia, and dependable energy for Europe.

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It is still too early to tell whether these basic and profound changes to American foreign policy are positive. In light of the Bush Doctrine, which sought to legitimise a martial, exceptionalist version of American global dominance by framing terrorism as a massive and existential threat to US and global security, the Obama team clearly envision a new era of American leadership premised on power, persuasion, prudence and patience.

As such, even those of us who’ve supported major planks of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy must recognise that the Obama Doctrine – however it matures, and however it fares – is at least an impressive attempt to reassert American moral leadership, and it is obviously founded upon a learned and careful estimation of how the world works.

The title of my latest column printed today in the Guelph Mercury.

Cheers,
M

Democratic Presidential Nominee, Senator Barack Obama (Il)

Fouad Ajami had an interesting piece recently in the WSJ. He made the case that the prospect of an Obama presidency represents the most profound ideological shift in American foreign policy since WWII.

So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama’s own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America’s claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama’s rise.

Down a little further, he entertains Obama’s gut instincts about American power.

Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. In their view, we can make our way in the world without the encumbrance of “hard” power. We would offer other nations apologies for the way we carried ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, and the foreign world would be glad for a reprieve from the time of American certitude.

And finally, he describes Obama’s cultural and political intuitions, and contrasts them against the McCain candidacy.

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America’s shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn’t be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

Mr. McCain, well, he’s not particularly articulate on this question. But he shares the widespread attitude of broad swaths of the country that are not consumed with worries about America’s standing in foreign lands. Mr. McCain is not eager to be loved by foreigners. In November, the country will have a choice between a Republican candidate forged in the verities of the 1950s, and a Democratic rival who walks out of the 1990s.

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Now, Ajami strikes some familiar chords here and some of them resonate with me. America is, as Ajami writes, an imperial republic with myriad hard power responsibilities across the globe.

Barack Obama is too embarrassed over Bush’s presidency and wears his discomfort with American global military dominance on his sleeve. And I don’t like it.

But. It is also not clear to me that Obama represents the most profound ideological sea-change in post-war American foreign policy. Is there not a case to be made that perhaps President Bush the Younger has a legitimate claim here?
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Ivo Daalder, former Clinton administration national security staffer and Brookings Institution think-tanker makes just this case in America Unbound.

On pages 12-13, Daalder lays out the foundational beliefs of the Bush Doctrine.

… first… in a dangerous world the best – if not the only – way to ensure America’s security was to shed the constraints imposed by friends, allies and international institutions…. Moreover, formal arrangements would inevitably constrain America’s ability to make the most of its primacy.

…

The second belief was that an America unbound should use its strength to change the status quo in the world…. The Bush philosophy instead turned John Quincy Adams on his head and argued that the United States should aggressively go abroad searching for monsters to destroy. That was the logic behind the Iraq War, and it animated the administration’s efforts to deal with other rogue states.

The Bush Doctrine – whether you love it, hate it, or some of both – represents a significant departure from post-war US foreign policy. (Though I am not yet convinced it constitutes a veritable revolution.) As promient IR scholar in the realist tradition, John Mearscheimer, persuasivey wrotein his contribution to openDemocracy:

The American military, in their (the neo-conservatives’) view, would swoop down out of the sky, finish off a regime, pull back and reload the shotgun for the next target. There might be a need for US ground troops in some cases, but that force would be small in number. The Bush doctrine did not call for a large army. Indeed, heavy reliance on a big army was antithetical to the strategy, because it would rob the military of the nimbleness and flexibility essential to make the strategy work.

And this strategy, enabled by the Revolution in Military Affairs, writes Mearscheimer, in turn enables Big Stick Diplomacy, which in turn facilitates a bandwagoning effect in international realations, whereby countries the world over are in awe of American will and power and her ability to replace regimes relatively effortlessly, and therefore fall in line when the situation turns critical.

But the Bush administration’s Big Stick diplomacy doesn’t seem to rival Obama’s IR agenda for the “major ideological departure” award in Ajami’s view?
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It seems to me that Mr. Ajami’s real beef is with Obama’s rhetoric – not so much his policies. Ajami’s second thesis – that Obama’s deepest intutions about American culture and power are very different from those of most president(ial nominee)s, is spot on. But Obama has articulated a pretty standard liberal-realist foreign policy agenda.

From what the Obama campaign has said so far, the Democratic nominee endorses an agenda that neither normalises pre-emption and preventative military actions nor explicticaly eschews them in principle; an agenda which seeks to further embed American power within the existing political, security and economic global order, as a means to integrate potentially belligerent great power competitors into the community of responsible nations. It is an agenda which affirms US exceptionalism (“… if Musharaff won’t act – we will.”), whilst acknowledging that perception and prestige are real, honest-to-goodness power assets in the mdoern global security environment, and that for America to abuse her prerogatives is to weaken the appeal and political viability of the Anglo-American order.
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Mr. Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy is troubling to the tradtional American patriot – to the Andrew Jackson crowd, august bevy that it is. For his own good, and that of America should he win in November, he ought to frame his IR policies less as a promise tod eliver the world from the Bush administration and more to defend the nation he loves in the best way he can according to the best traditions he knows. More Truman, less Dukakis.

But to suggest Obama’s IR policies are radically out of sync with post-war American foreign policy in general is to overstate the case. Ajami has a bone to pick with the Obama-Biden communications team – not the IR advisors.

Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska)

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Analysis

Pros

• She’ll help McCain appeal to “disenfranchised” Clinton Democrats. Probably in a big way.
• She’ll re-enforce McCain’s maverick image, being a corruption-fighter, an outsider, etc., etc…
• She’ll energise the conservative base of the GOP.
• Every time the Democrats question her experience, Republicans can remind Americans that she has at least as much professional political experience than Obama. She’s actually *run* something.

Cons

• Whilst she’s got as much professional political experience than the top of the Democratic ticket, Obama is at least an intellectual heavyweight. As a constitutional law professor as the University of Chicago, no one doubts his commitment to law and government as an intellectual and moral practice. That’s not nothing, even though it’s perfectly fair for Republicans to play the ‘Not Ready’ card.
• Her selection as the Republican no. 2 just doesn’t pass the smell test. Something happens to J-Mac and it’s President Palin? Come, now. There is just no evidence she’s got the character, wisdom or experience to be Commander in Chief.

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This is a great political choice that changes the game, helps McCain reclaim his brand, ends the Democratic Convention coverage and makes life much harder for the Opposition.

But in a very simple and profound way, it may also be an irresponsible choice.

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We’re talking about Rome, here. And we’re talking about the brand new governor of Alaska.

Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska)

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No, seriously.

Bio here.

Commentary later.

Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA, ret'd)

Well, it’s not Pawlenty.

As I said before, I think Romney’s the guy. He’s polished, capable, bright and has presidential bearing. Of all the names that have made their way onto the Republican VP short-list, Romney’s the one I’d trust most with the presidency.
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UPDATE: Check out McCain’s campaign website. Is it just me, or does it look atrocious? Why is it blue – isn’t that colour already spoken for? And what’s with the “Reform, Prosperity, Peace” bit? It’s been done.

Obama’s reasonably good speech last night notwithstanding, the “Country First’ theme was much better.

UPDATE II: Uh-oh.

UPDATE III: According to the BBC, it’s Palin.

Part 1:

Part 2:

(h/t: RCP)

This is one of the best “night show” performances I’ve ever seen a politician give. Home run.
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And for what it’s worth, here’s Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts) on Morning Joe looking awfully vice presidential. I think he’d make the best no. 2.

The above is the opening few minutes of the keynote address to the Democratic Convention on Monday night by Mrs. Michelle Obama. She is to be congratulated on her delivery.

The rest is available, of course, on YouTube. Text available here.

Let’s take a look under the hood.
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Purpose and Theme
It appears as though the purpose of the speech was to shape Michelle Obama’s image. The speech wasn’t so much about framing Barack Obama (save a few good lines about his personal life).

The main theme was about closing the gap between America as it is and as it ought to be:

Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be.” And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is — even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves — to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn’t that the great American story?

Well enough, but Democrats have to be careful. Republicans will probably be playing the patriotism card in this election, and Obama shouldn’t get caught not loving America enough as it is.
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Writing
The writing was good. I’d give it a B. The strength of the text is on a fairly superficial level, in my view. The wordsmithing outclassed the speech’s organisation and theme.

The address had a recurring metaphor:

That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.

The “thread that connects our hearts”. It appears again here:

You see, Barack doesn’t care where you’re from, or what your background is, or what party — if any — you belong to. That’s not how he sees the world. He knows that thread that connects us — our belief in America’s promise, our commitment to our children’s future — is strong enough to hold us together as one nation even when we disagree.

It’s a great metaphor and a little under-utilised.

Probably the only obvious shortcoming of the writing as such was the failure of the speechwriters to nicely colloquialise the text. They used the word “See” too often, and went a bit too heavy on “Folks”.
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Values
The speechwriters did a great job at enabling Mrs. Obama to effortlessly reference heartland values. Often these references were couched in fine writing. Here is, I think, the best example of this:

The military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it.

And the speechwriters deserve special recognition for reassuring voters that the Obamas are a loving, traditional, all-American family. Michelle Obama repeatedly framed herself as passive and feminine, and Barack as a protective and loving father. They also acknowledged and deftly diffused, at least somewhat, concerns over Barack’s own unorthodox upbringing.

And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital 10 years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.

And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they — and your sons and daughters — will tell their own children about what we did together in this election.

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All in all, it was a job well done. Good writing and great delivery. Mission accomplished.

Photo Credit: AP

Michael Powell has written a great piece which appeared today in NYT and the International Herald Tribune, entitled Obama’s Ideological Elusiveness.

In his article, Powell discusses the dynamic nexus of ideological impulses that drives Obama’s policy and rhetoric.

Obama, an intellectually curious man, is nothing if not pragmatic in the application of philosophy to politics, temperamentally inclined toward no strand of thinking. In his books, sentences are pulled taut between opposing viewpoints; a literary critic remarked on the “internal counterpoise” in his writing.

But that leaves a fundamental question for admirers and critics: Is his a consistent philosophy that borrows pragmatically from the center while rooted on the left? Or does he have an expedient slide-step that allows him to appeal to the center without alienating his liberal base?

That excerpt really nails the dilemma, if you’d care to call it that. What drives Obama? Is he an ideologically-committed liberal who merely placates the vital centre to achieve electoral victory? Or is he an honest-to-goodness pragmatist with no such ideological “ballast”?

Powell writes about Obama’s gut-level take on economics and foreign affairs.

In economics, he endorses a redistributionist liberalism but is skeptical of too much government tinkering. His most influential advisers hail from the University of Chicago, a bastion of free-marketers and a place where he taught law-school classes for many years.

In foreign affairs, Obama stands defined by opposition to the Iraq war and emphasis on “transnational” threats, from global warming to disease and terrorism. But he is no pacifist; in his 2002 speech opposing the invasion of Iraq he stressed that he was only against “dumb war.” Obama would increase military spending and has not ruled out military action against Iran.

In sum:

“His philosophy is ambition”, said Fred Siegel, a historian at The Cooper Union in New York. ” See him as having a rhetoric rather than a philosophy.”

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As I read Powell’s article, I began to sense something familiar. The writer, on Obama’s behalf, seemed to intone a kind of conservatism with which I am familiar and to which I am philosophically indebted. To wit:

The communitarian strain in Mr. Obama’s thinking often surprises his liberal supporters. Roughly put, communitarianism holds that individual rights must be circumscribed by the communal, with all the cross-generational, religious and patriotic obligations that implies. Sweeping change must be approached slowly; when government enforces individual responsibilities, a moral crisis looms.

And a little further down:

Culture rather than government, he says, promotes individual success and social cohesion, and federal courts should tread carefully.

Powell confirmed my instincts a few paragraphs later. Or, rather, Theda Sckopol, a Harvard professor, did:

“He’s certainly centre-left but he has a pretty conservative social message,” said Theda Sckopol, a government professor at Harvard University.

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This is a brand of conservatism, though, with which I dare say most Americans are unfamiliar. This worldview is predicated, in part, upon deference to culture as a living and evolving organism; a dynamic and imperfect association of men united in historical experience, family lineage, enduring national institutions and mutual responsibility. This conservatism is cynical of governments’ attempts at social engineering and wary of secular political ideologies.

It is a kind of thinking – an approach to politics – than bears the potential to draw both centre-left and centre-right public policies into the mainstream, and weave them into the broader national and cultural narrative.

Congratulations to Michael Powell on an elegantly written assessment of Senator Obama’s conflicted ideology. Or rather, his search for one.