or why I don’t think the Washington Times is not quite right.
1. I’m not at all sure the Iranian Embassy situation did all that much to hurt Carter in the end. Take a look at Carter’s job approval numbers in his last two years. From Spring 1to mid-November of 1979, Carter’s job approval numbers bounced from the high 20s to the low 40s. Carter’s approval ratings then spiked with the hostage crisis for several months before settling back into a range from the low 40s to the low 30s for the rest of the year. It looks to me that it was the economy that “carterized” Carter and that the patriotic public reaction to the hostage crisis hid Carter’s underlying weakness for several months. That doesn’t mean that some kind of triumph in Iran wouldn’t have helped Carter (though that wouldn’t have helped double digit inflation.) It is just that Carter was well on his way to losing by a landslide before the hostage crisis and there is no obvious way that he could have turned that situation around. By comparison, Obama has a 49% Real Clear Politics job approval rating as of today.
2. I think there is a technocratic case to be made against the Obama administration’s handling of the period preceding the events in Libya. That case could be made strongly, but it also needs to be made carefully. It wouldn’t be smart for Romney to try to play an exaggeration of Reagan (who actually spent much of the 1980 campaign explaining that he was a basically peaceful guy who was willing to stand up for America) to Obama’s wimpy Carter. Citing the drone bombing program and the killing of Bin Laden won’t help Obama talk his way out of high unemployment, slow growth, and declining median income. But if Romney tries to paint Obama as a wimpy apologizer, then Obama can come back that he ordered the killing Obama and the only hit Romney ever put out was to lay off employees. It isn’t fair but, the response writes itself. Romney’s foreign policy challenge is to make himself seem like a reasonable, stable, informed guy who won’t get us in trouble. That is a tough enough trick as Ross Douthat pointed out today. If Romney comes at Obama with some tough guy, unlike-you-I-won’t-go-on-apology-tours stuff, then he is begging Obama to hit him with a rhyme silencer.
3. Romney actually has a much stronger case to make against Obama on Obama’s Medicare record and current Medicare proposal, and even on abortion. Romney was actually doing pretty good when the debate was focused on Medicare policy. Then it all turned into how the economy is lousy and how much Romney loves his immediate family. Romney just isn’t willing to make the case.
September 15th, 2012 | 12:46 am
Would it be so bad for the Republicans if they admited that Obama has done a decent job on FOREIGN policy and a terrible job on DOMESTIC policy? I just don’t think the foreign policy arguments against Obama have ever been that great
September 15th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
CJ, they could, but they would be lying.
Pete, I think a more applicable understanding of Carterification would be our understanding of his policies in hindsight. Particularly with reference to his naivete as it concerned the overthrotoday the Shaw, which we now know gave rise to one of the worste bad actors in the region. It’s true it didn’t effect his numbers then, but it demolishes the estimation of his foreign policy today
September 15th, 2012 | 4:04 pm
CJ, they could but they would be lying.
Pete, I think a more applicable understanding of “Carterize” would entail our understanding of his policy’s now in hindsight, particularly with reference to his Naivete regarding the overthrow of the Shaw which we now know helped to set the stage for one of the worste bad actors in the region. It may be true it didn’t effect his numbers then, but it pretty effectively demolishes the view of his foreign policy from the point of view of history now.
Understood in this light, “Carterize” as it applies to Obama would be to draw the obvious analogy that they both share which is an epic naivete regarding the nature of the enemy we are facing in the middle east. Such that, much like Carter regarding the Shaw, Obama thought he could facilitate the overthrow of Mubarek, and somehow introduce a new democratic Arab Spring. What he facilitated was a chain reaction that brought down two, admitedly brutal strongmen, and thereby paved the way for their replacement by something far worse.
These are the sort of good intentions that make wonderful paths to hell.
September 15th, 2012 | 7:43 pm
CJ, that’s true, and as Ross Douthat pointed out, the issues are muddled and it is tough to have a lot of confidence in any particular set of policies. That’s why I think that Romney would be better off just trying to seem reasonable (and that doesn’t mean never being critical) on foreign policy while emphasizing differences on domestic policy.
Pseudoplotinus, I think that a broad critique of Obama along the naive/wimpy lines is problematic for several reasons.
1. The Bin Laden killing and the drone program don’t look naive in the way that conservatives generally apply the term to foreign policy (now NPR would be a different matter.) The response would be I put a hit on an American citizen working for the enemy, who are you calling naive Bain Man?
2. It is a bit late for Republicans not named Ron Paul or James Baker (and of course I’m kidding because there are others too – but none named Mitt Romney) to argue against democracy promotion in the Middle East. I’m not sure the argument couldn’t be made, but probably not in 2012 by Romney. The situation is different because the last Republican president made it different. Once again this is setting up a head shot from Obama. Now if Romney has real principles along the lines you describe (and hey, maybe he does) then he should spell them out regardless of the politics.
That doesn’t mean that Romney can’t take sharp jabs at intelligence failures and bureaucratic snafus. Obama sure would. He would just be better off if they were needles. Trying to work Obama into a Carter frame isn’t going to work with the people who need to be convinced. You might be able to convince people Obama is wrong on this and that. Trying to sell him as a wimp won’t work and it will be almost as hard to sell him as naive. Try wrong. It is reason enough to replace someone who gets process stuff wrong.
Though once again, if Romney has a no BS view of foreign policy then he should share it regardless of the politics. From what I’ve read (No Apology) and what I’ve heard, Romney just seems to be about the Strong America boilerplate.
September 15th, 2012 | 9:45 pm
Pete, Barack Obama can take out as many high value assets as he likes with his drones, if his larger Middle East Policy results in the surrender of regions like Egypt and Libya to Al Qaida, then he’s giving the enemy an exchange they will more than willingly take. The difference here is focusing on actual effects of policy rather than whether Obama is a wimp or not. If Obama wants to turn it into a question of his manhood, then that’s easy enough to respond to with a good dose of ridicule: “Mr. President we are all happy that you feel like you’ve proved you manhood to the world, unfortunately your adveraries in the Middle East don’t seem to be terribly impressed.” etc.
You’re certainly right that Romney will need to go off Boilerplate if he wants to gain ground on this topic, but the way to do it is simple, given the 2008 Obama’s grand talk of how he was going to transform relations once in office. He has not only empirically failed but managed to make the same blunder as Bush, only he thought he was going to do with charm what Bush couldn’t do with tanks.
What Romney can offer to the voter, in contrast to Obama, is the ability to learn the right lessons from the past, and here he would do well to read deeply from General Petraues’ text on Counter Insurgency.
http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347763244&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=Petraues+Counterinsurgency
Wherein Petraues argues that a theatre of Counter Insurgency can only be won if your willing to put your own military assest at risk by protecting the civil population from the bad actors. Unless your will to do that, and do it for as long as it takes, you can be garaunteed that the civil population will side with the bad actors.
From this Romney can offer up the simple doctrine, don’t start changing regime’s unless you prepared to occupy Iraq style and be committed for the long haul.
In doing this Romney can illustrate that he isn’t just a Republican, but an executive who has the skills to learn from the past and apply to the policy of the present whereas Obama is just a Democrat who made the same mistake as Bush, but in a way that only a Democrat could have.
September 16th, 2012 | 7:22 am
The overthrow of the Shah of Iran didn’t do Carter much harm. What was he going to do about revolution? The hostage crisis didn’t hurt him at first either, until gradual revelations of ineptitude did hurt him. It took awhile for the awfulness of the situation to sink in for the American public. More than 400 days, well over a year, was a constant reminder of Carter’s foreign policy and what it had earned us. Operation Eagle Claw, meant to snatch the hostages out of Iran, was plagued with operational problems and for an administration that had emphasized military budget reductions in favor of social program budgetary increases, that failure, disaster, really, was a political crisis for Cater. Again, the details came out slowly. The Wikipedia article is too facile. Equipment failure because of cheaper maintenance techniques and reduced training time for the men — everything done on the cheap — made the operation a fiasco. That’s the sort of thing that comes out over time.
A parallel there could be the book by the Navy Seal that outlines what went wrong in the bin Laden operation. The blab after was an informational nightmare; who knows what benefit there was in knowing what Al Qaeda reported to bin Laden and was accessible to the CIA and military intelligence at the compound and could have been used with even a week’s delay in reporting to the press about the operation. Maybe we would have known about the people in Al Qaeda involved in the Arab Spring. Maybe there would have been more warning if people with the potential of acting subversively didn’t know Afridi, the doctor who helped with the bin Laden operation in Afghanistan hadn’t been left behind, which was only really a problem because the media was given all the information about him and Pakistan could be even more embarrassed.
Surely the point about the Libya assassinations is that the State Department was incredibly naive about the situation in Libya.
The drone program makes military sense, but not when the military has to get presidential approval for every hit. That takes time. People move and situations change too quickly. That approval doesn’t limit mistakes because the mistakes are in intelligence. Don’t you wonder how many bad guys have got away because the president couldn’t be reached at a campaign fundraiser? Or how many approved drone kills were wrong because of bad intelligence? We’ll never know. Also, presidentially approved drone kills only makes Geneva Convention sense if we are in a War on Terror, which we are not supposed to be anymore, according to the president and Secretary of State Clinton.
Like with Carter, as the public gradually becomes aware of what a foreign policy fiasco Obama and Clinton have created, what loons of ambassadors they have appointed like Anne Patterson who tells her Marines not to use live ammunition because she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. That might make sense in Luxembourg or even London where the local police can subdue rioters, but not in places like Egypt where, like Libya, local security is not very — secure. Reveling all of this is the responsibility of the portion of the press favorable to the right, because the mainstream will have no choice but to look at the situation or look inept itself. That’s what happened under Carter, the weight of information unfavorable to him couldn’t be sufficiently suppressed or softened or apologized away. What’s Carterized Obama is Democratic assumptions about the world and how things work, heck, just about everything.
Pete, you should fix this typo: “then Obama can come back that he ordered the killing Obama and the only hit Romney ever called was to lay off employees.”
September 16th, 2012 | 1:16 pm
Pseudoplotinus,
“From this Romney can offer up the simple doctrine, don’t start changing regime’s unless you prepared to occupy Iraq style and be committed for the long haul.”
That’s actually an interesting way to go about it, but I can see several problems (aside from the one that Romney hasn’t articulated such a strategy.
1. That would put Romney directly on the other side of the democracy promotion elements of his own party. It isn’t just William Kristol. John McCain is there too. If he want the intraparty fight, then fine, but there is more to it than attacking Obama if that is the strategy you’re going to take.
2. This strategy can very plausibly be called naive from the other side. They can argue that not only does it overestimate the ability of the US to preserve Middle East dictatorships that are favorable to the US, but it also puts the US on the other side of all those who oppose those regimes. It was President George W. Bush himself who opposed this kind of “stability.” Maybe Bush was wrong and Obama should have done who-knows-what to preserve the Mubarek regime. It is just that it gets complicated really fast. But if that is what Romney believes, that’s what he should say.
And of course even most democracy promotion types are in no big hurry to see the replacement of the Saudi royal family with an fully elected regime.
Kate, Thank for the typo thing! I’ll get to it very shortly.
September 16th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
Pete, what I am proposing isn’t a contradiction of Kristol and McCain so much as a necessary elaboration. For instance, what is going on in Egypt and Libya is not democracy, but elections, and the latter, as we are learning, is not the same as the former. For to have an election where either the chosen candidate is clearly uninterested in democratizing the countries institutions, OR, the candiditate is well intended but is powerless over anti-democratic elements, is to democracy as fools gold is to gold. If we’re going to promote democracy we better start learning how to properly define it.
What we did in Kosovo, and attempted to do in Afganistan and Iraq are better examples of promoting democracy, however, as we learned under Bush, the American people simply did not have the will to persevere.
What I am recommending is a reality check. Candidate Obama comes along and says he can make the middle east friendly by promoting good will. The American voters took the bait and we now have chaos in the region. Romney can use this as a learning moment by emphasizing to the American people that the Middle East is at a cross roads, and its time to grow up. We can stop fooling ourselves into thinking that civilizing this region is somehow going to happen on the cheap, and that what needs to take place is some geopolitical honesty – beginning with an honest discussion of the cost of promoting democracy.
I’m not proposing the Petraues Doctrine out of some Ron Paulian rationalization to withdraw from the world, but out of a Reaganesque clarification of the stakes and the necessary cost.
Having said that, I don’t have the impression any more than you do that Romney has a coherent vision on this subject matter, at least not yet. But if things continue to percolate the way they are in the Middle East, this would be an excellent opportunity to present the voter with some bracing honesty.
September 16th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
Pseudoplotinus, I doubt McCain or Kristol would recognize your policy suggestion as an elaboration (necessary or otherwise), which gets to the heart of the (electoral) problem. If one’s policy is that Middle East dictatorships should be supported against mass movements calling for elections unless there is an intervening period American occupation, counterinsurgency, and nation building, then that is saying something that neither Kristol nor McCain ever said. It is in fact the opposite of what McCain has said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/allen-west-libya_n_1877609.html
Now maybe McCain is wrong, but a policy that, in practice, opposes the replacement of Middle East dictatorships unless the US is first willing to invade and occupy would be a big change in foreign policy both from the recent past and also one that Romney has not come out for to the best of my knowledge. There would be major intraparty blowback. And that isn’t even getting into how much influence the US has in preserving such regimes in the face of mass popular mobilization and how internally cohesive those regimes are.
So once again, if this is what Romney believes (and there is no evidence that it is), then fine. That’s what he should say. But he would have a better chance of making his case on Medicare or abortion than with such a foreign policy approach.
“We can stop fooling ourselves into thinking that civilizing this region is somehow going to happen on the cheap, and that what needs to take place is some geopolitical honesty – beginning with an honest discussion of the cost of promoting democracy.”
True, but I’ve seen no evidence that Romney wants such an accounting and Obama can always point out that, when it comes to recklessness and naiveté, it wasn’t his idea to invade Iraq. Now maybe the invasion of Iraq was neither reckless nor naive, but is this the conversation you want to be having in 2012? Maybe, but not if you’re Romney.
September 16th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
Pete, thanks for your time.
For the record I said:
“From this Romney can offer up the simple doctrine, don’t start changing regime’s unless you are PREPARED to occupy Iraq style”.
Which is different from: “don’t change regimes unless you plan to invade and occupy them first”.
The latter assumes an occupation, the former simply implies your prepared to occupy if it comes to that.
Hope that’s clarifying.
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