Achievement Gap
The current presidential campaign is, and of right ought to be, focused almost entirely on the economy. With the exception of ongoing debates about immigration and international trade policy, most of the soundbites and stump speeches have tended to revolve around the opaquely ambiguous issues of job creation and fantastic tax and entitlement reform plans. What few of the Republican candidates seem capable of debating are the increasingly uncertain motives of U.S. foreign policy.
For the first time in recent memory, Republican audiences during this fall’s early debates have lustily applauded the non-interventionist stances of multiple candidates, including former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, a vocal critic of the U.S.’s continued military presence in Afghanistan. Many in the GOP have seemingly tilted so far as to endorse the neo-isolationism of Ron Paul, though many in the debate audience at the Florida State Fairgrounds were clearly uncomfortable with his apparent justification of Osama bin Laden’s motives for the September 11th attacks.
Has the GOP returned to its populist isolationism of days long gone? The conservative thinker Irving Kristol warned of this impulse in 1973, when the American appetite for bloody foreign escapades had hit new lows in the wake of the Vietnam War. “The neo-isolationist impulse is, literally, a ‘reactionary’ one,” he cautioned. “A reaction against Vietnam, a nostalgic yearning for past simplicities.”
Recognizing this trend, many internationally minded Republicans have urged current candidates to prove themselves as competent leaders in the arena of foreign policy. Not doing so increases the risk of looking foolish in debates with a president who has notched up at least a few significant foreign policy victories in his first few years in office, namely the killing of several top al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden.
Henry Kissinger, still revered as a godfather in neo-conservative internationalist circles, has begged New Jersey governor Chris Christie to join the race and was quoted by the New York Times as saying Christie would “best represent our interests abroad.” High praise for a state executive with little experience in foreign affairs. But Kissinger’s pleading belies a greater worry that none of the current candidates have foreign policy credentials worthy of the nation’s highest office. For all the positive attributes that governors bring to a presidential campaign–they have run an executive branch of government–they seldom have to answer questions about international affairs, let alone make policy decisions.
The one governor of the current crop who should be able to avoid such criticism is Huntsman–and he has attempted to play to his foreign experiences as a differentiating factor from other candidates. Unfortunately, Huntsman has proven to have a few too many differentiating factors from his fellow candidates, miring him in the anonymity of less-than-margin-of-error poll ratings.
The two frontrunners, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, have attempted to pounce on only the most politically expedient of foreign issues- recently, support for American allies such as Israel and Taiwan. Seeking to ride the media frenzy leading up to the Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood at the United Nations, Perry lashed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the Obama administration’s alleged abandonment of the Jewish state. Romney quickly jumped into the fray, claiming that Obama had “thrown Israel under the bus.” Besides turning Israel into a wedge issue for Jewish voters, these two men have practically no records of their own to stand on in terms of support for Israel, besides the perfunctory platitudes with which most politicians have grown quite familiar.
With regard to Taiwan, Romney was again quick to snipe that Obama had abandoned an ally and violated a 1979 agreement to maintain Taiwan’s defensive capabilities by only agreeing to upgrade the island’s aging air force rather than selling it new planes. On this issue Huntsman, despite his experience in the region, was tellingly silent, suggesting a degree of nuance in the issue that Romney preferred to gloss over.
Ultimately, foreign policy is likely a debate area where Obama is licking his chops. Compared to 2008, when he was unquestionably outmatched by Sen. John McCain’s decades of foreign experience, Obama can rightfully claim the advantage against every one of the likely potential nominees. Even Huntsman would be neutered by the fact that his latest ambassadorship was in service of the Obama administration. Any successes he claimed could justifiably be shared with Obama. Unless the other candidates can quickly accumulate the knowledge and develop positions necessary to seem credible, the Republicans will have a severely weakened arsenal in their quest to replace the president. Luckily for them, most Americans are barely looking past their bank accounts, much less across oceans.
