2016: Vote Like the World Depends On It. It Does.

While we await Hillary Clinton’s almost inevitable nomination (at least that is what I am told by a former Democratic operative I know; i.e., a former operative, not a former Democrat¹), the show is on the Republican side.  I watched the Republican debates Thursday night for the first time since back in August.  (As I tweeted Thursday night, the absence of Donald Trump made for a  good debate.)  In August, I watched because I was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and there wasn’t much else to do.  Thursday night I watched to learn something – about the candidates.  And since the debate was on Fox News, I thought I might.²  The Fox News people asked good questions in August, and I figured they would do so again last night. They did.

In February of last year, I said the Republicans had an embarrassment of riches when it came to presidential candidates.  It hasn’t quite turned out that way.  Of the eight good (or at least decent) candidates I mentioned back then, four are already out of the race.  And several of those who are still in the race make it an embarrassment, as opposed to an embarrassment of riches.

On October 16, 2015, I talked about the importance, for domestic policy, of electing a Republican president in November.  I did the same with respect to the First Amendment on November 29.  Now it’s foreign policy’s turn.  I have written, more than once (for example, here and here), about the problems caused by President Obama’s foreign policy.  It’s going to take the next president a long time to recover from the problems of the last seven years, if it can even be done in four (or eight) years.  For example, damaged credibility takes a long time to rebuild.  Even if a president is able to convince other countries that the red lines she or he draws actually mean something, how many countries may hope (or worry, depending on which side they are on) about that president’s successor.

In terms of recovering from the problems of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, Hillary Clinton would have you believe she can do it (though she does not phrase it that way).  She has the experience of being a senator for eight years, secretary of state for four, and in the White House for another eight.  That is certainly more experience, at least in terms of being close to things, than other candidates have.  But you need more than “close-to-things” experience, and that’s the problem for Secretary Clinton.  In terms of fixing our foreign policy, she worked for President Obama for four years, she effectively lied about Benghazi³, and she comes from a party, most of which supports what President Obama has been doing.  She may try to say or imply in a roundabout way that she will fix the problems with President Obama’s foreign policy, but she is going to have to do it against the wishes of most of her own party.  Relying on that is like hoping to roll a two – with three dice.

Which leaves us with the Republicans⁴ – or, more accurately, some of the Republicans.  Rand Paul is a legitimate isolationist.  He is sincere about his positions (unlike some of the other Republican candidates), but I think he is wrong, and his isolationism would be bad. 

Ted Cruz has said he would carpet bomb ISIS and would find out “if sand can glow in the dark.”  I do not know if he means this as a serious position, though he didn’t disavow it as hyperbole Thursday night.  The fact is, however, this is not a serious position.  It’s not so much that it is improper under the legitimate rules of war.  More importantly, it wouldn’t work.  Ask David Petraeus.  Ask Robert Gates.  Ask Ray Odierno.  Ask any number of military people who actually know something about the Middle East and fighting terror, and they will tell you we cannot beat ISIS by carpet-bombing Syria and Iraq.  A policy isn’t supposed to just make you feel good; it’s supposed to actually work.  Finding out “if sand can glow in the dark” isn’t going to beat ISIS.  I don’t know why Senator Cruz says this, though most of the reasons I can come up with do not reflect well on him or on the respect he has for his listeners.  Instead of giving us soundbites, how about a real military and diplomatic strategy.  George H.W. Bush had one in the first Gulf War⁵, and I can assure you it wasn’t making the sand glow.

Even though Donald Trump did not attend the debate Thursday night, I suppose I have to talk about him.  I understand that lots of people, some Republicans, some independents, and even some Democrats feel that Mr. Trump expresses their anger, at what is happening both domestically and overseas.  I appreciate they are angry; I am angry, too, but that doesn’t mean Donald Trump would be a good president.  Many people, me included, think Barack Obama has made a lot of mistakes in foreign affairs.  The problem is Donald Trump would be much worse.

Ten years ago, a Russian dissident, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned and killed in England by radioactive polonium-210.  He fell ill after meeting with two former Russian agents.  The suspicion is that the polonium was in the tea they gave him.⁶  Shortly before he passed away, he said he had been investigating the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was shot the previous month. Mr. Litvinenko also said that Vladimir Putin was responsible for "everything that happened to him".

In 2015, a public inquiry into Mr. Litvinenko’s assassination was begun.  The results were issued on January 21 of this year.  The report concluded that President Putin “probably” approved Mr. Litvinenko’s murder.  Obviously, there is nothing surprising or shocking in this conclusion (other than the fact countries very, very seldom say such things about each other in official documents).  But Mr. Trump didn’t care.  In October of last year, Mr. Trump said he “would get along very well with” Mr. Putin.  After President Putin praised Mr. Trump, as “bright and talented” and "the absolute leader of the presidential race," Mr. Trump said President Putin’s praise was a "great honor."  In response to claims that President Putin had ordered the killing of journalists and political dissidents, Mr. Trump said, "He's running his country and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country." 

Here’s what Mr. Trump said about the British report of Mr. Litvinenko’s murder (from “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business):

“Has Putin said it?  Have they found him guilty?  I don’t think they’ve found him guilty.  They say a lot of things about me that are untrue too. … If he did it, fine.  But I don’t know that he did it.  You know, people are saying they think it was him, it might have been him, it could have been him.  But Maria, in all fairness to Putin – I don’t know.  You know, and I’m not saying this because he says, ‘Trump is brilliant and leading everybody’ – the fact is that, you know, he hasn’t been convicted of anything.  You know, some people say he absolutely didn’t do it.  First of all, he says he didn’t do it.  But many people say it wasn’t him.  So who knows who did it.”

I understand people are angry with the “establishment.”  It’s fine to be angry, but that doesn’t mean you elect Bozo the Clown to be president.  These are not the comments of somebody I want dealing with Vladimir Putin.  If this is what Donald Trump thinks of Vladimir Putin, that is fine.  I just can’t trust my country to his care. 

Which actually goes to my last point.  In his recent biography of George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Jon Meacham said this of George H.W. Bush’s election in 1988:

“The American voters turned to him in 1988 for many of the same reasons so many others had turned to him in smaller ways for so many years and across so many different assignments: because experience and intuition suggested to them that things would be safe in his hands.” (p.348)

“Safe in his hands.”  That is not the isolationism of Rand Paul.  That is not a man who talks about carpet-bombing ISIS to see if sand can glow in the dark.  And it is definitely not a man who seems to think that, if Vladimir Putin says he didn’t order somebody’s killing, he’s going to believe President Putin.

This doesn’t leave us with the “embarrassment of riches” I saw a year ago, but it does leave us with enough good people that we don’t need to elect an embarrassment – or a danger.
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¹ The point is, as I understand it, that regardless of what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire (which is almost home field for Bernie Sanders), Senator Saunders is not going to win South Carolina, or anywhere else in the south, and is going to have problems once the primaries start coming in bunches in March.  In other words, and this is my point, about the only thing that could stop former Secretary Clinton would be an indictment in relation to her email problems or  problems relating to contributions to the Clinton Foundation by foreign governments and other people at the same time those governments/people had issues before the State Department.  Or a leak about the Attorney General (spelled P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t) not allowing the Justice Department to seek such an indictment.  (Nate Silver agrees at FightThirtyEight.)

² Which probably makes me a troglodyte in the view of most of my dear wife’s friends.

³ I consider telling the parents of one of the four men killed in Benghazi that we would get the guy who made the video, after having previously said in emails to her daughter and the Egyptian foreign minister that it was Islamic terrorists and not the video, to be lying – or more of what I previously called “Clintonian slickery."  (Here.) 

⁴ Bernie Sanders doesn’t count because even former Secretary Clinton would be better than him.

⁵ John Kasich talked approvingly about the first Gulf War Thursday night, but it was in the same breath he was talking about Ronald Reagan.  It would have been nice if at least John Kasich could have acknowledged the foreign policy achievements of George H.W. Bush.

⁶ In a talk to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on January 26, Robert Gates said that he thought we might be able to ally with Russia and China on terrorism.  They have their own internal terror problems, and they might work with us out of their own self-interest.  We do, however, need to stop Vladimir Putin from committing terrorism of his own, he said.  You can meet with President Putin, Mr. Gates said.  Just don’t drink the tea.