"O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion."
(by Robert Burns)
The ability to see America as others see it: That – more than the aspirations of any presidential candidate – is what is at stake in the ongoing argument between Senators Obama and Clinton over foreign policy.
Many partisans line up their opinions on this issue according to what their candidate says: i.e., “because I favor Clinton, I am therefore against changing the current policy of shunning some world leaders,” or, “because I am with Obama, I am therefore in favor of changing that policy.”
That kind of politics to me is bass-ackward.
A politics with integrity means that we decide where we stand on the big issues independently of where our racehorse lines up.
More after the jump (with poll and lots of links)…
Obama’s statement on Monday night that he would meet with controversial world leaders continues to reverberate. It has brought the first open contrast between the front-running Democratic presidential candidates that didn’t center on superficial matters.
Even Edwards’ supporters ought to be happy: nobody’s talking about anyone’s hair anymore. Yay. And if Edwards entered this Clinton-Obama debate and began arguing as passionately as they are on the merits of the dispute, he’d be right there in the headlines with them in ways that neither Dodd nor Richardson or others would be able to do. I wish he would, because his own answer on Monday night needs some further explanation for us to be able to see how he’d handle foreign policy as president.
I’ve noticed some interesting tendencies in response to the first substantive issue debate of the campaign.
Some project emotions upon the Clinton-Obama foreign policy debate along the lines of: “Mommy and Daddy are fighting! Stop fighting!”. But we're not children, and candidates are not parents.
Some others feel that Democratic candidates shouldn’t criticize other Democratic candidates, not even over substantive issues, and debate what candidates should not say.
Others, still, engage in triumphalist citing of "racehorse poll" numbers (that many of us watch daily and are aware of already, thank you very much). But regarding this dispute, the currently available numbers are already stale, since it will be a week or so – maybe longer - before this defining moment in the 2008 campaign is reflected in finished public opinion surveys. What has been entered into here is a process that has changed the dynamics of the campaign and will continue to play out all summer long.
A word to the wise is sufficient: If you crow about polling numbers today, you must be prepared to eat that crow when the data suddenly shifts in the future.
Many of those that remember how the polls shifted during the 2003 and 2004 Democratic presidential nomination fight – and that had spent previous months citing polls - have learned that lesson. Others will learn it, the hard way, in this cycle.
That’s why I like focus groups more than polls. They open a window in to how the public is feeling, as to what is moving it, and they often show what will happen later as those feelings convert into opinion. Today’s focus group can be a predictor of tomorrow’s polls.
I’m interested in how the public feels about the merits: Will the American people favor a break with the policies of the past and a new willingness by the next president to speak directly with the leaders of nations (selectively) shunned in the past?
The focus group results from Monday night suggest strongly that, yes, the American people want to break with the past. I posted this brief video in a comment on another diary, but since I have not seen it posted to an actual diary entry, I’ll repost it here (if you’ve seen it, you can skip over it; if not, it is a “must see.”):
The new Rasmussen poll on that very issue suggests that the American people aren’t as dumb as their leaders have presumed them to be all these years:
“Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say that the next President should meet with the heads of nations such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea without setting any preconditions. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 34% disagree while 24% are not sure…
“Democrats, by a 55% to 22% margin, agree with Obama.”
That's not a "horserace poll." It's an issue poll, which makes it more revealing to the matter at hand.
At very least, it makes the claims by some of the following pundits – that Obama’s statement would be opposed by the electorate – seem pretty silly.
Take National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, for example, who on debate night wrote:
"Hillary is the nominee. She won't talk to Ahmadinejad and Assad? That puts her way Right of our Speaker of the House. If I had to vote for a Democrat, I know who it would be."
Or, from the same mag, Giuliani advisor John Poderetz:
"Hillary: I don't like her. I wrote an entire book on how to stop her. But in these debates, there's Hillary in the lead...and then there's everybody else."
And that freakazoid professional hater that pushed her pal Bill O’Reilly into his fight with the Daily Kos, Michelle Malkin:
Here’s a little something else for those “Republicans for Obama” to snack on. World Apology Tour ‘08, baby.
And there’s Mitt Romney:
It's absolutely extraordinary that someone could be so out of touch with the nature of our world," Romney said of Obama. Romney scathingly added that Obama's philosophy mirrors that of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who promoted a policy of "appeasement" towards Nazi Germany in the years before World War II.
John McCain, too:
“Are we going to come out of this meeting, and the president of Iran is going to say, ‘I'm stopping the IEDs, I'm going to stop developing nuclear weapons, I will agree that Israel is going to exist,’ then fine. Then lets set up the meeting.”
Right-wing radio talker Hugh Hewitt:
Senator Clinton had the common sense to say no, she wouldn't make such a commitment. She's got a lot of problems as a candidate, but always pandering to the "give peace a chance" crowd isn't one of them.
Byron York, in his National Review column:
“...it revealed Obama’s almost embarrassingly naïve view of a president’s role in world affairs.”
Charles Krauthammer:
"...a freshman senator who does not instinctively understand why an American president does not share the honor of his office with a malevolent clown like Hugo Chavez.
And Rich Lowry is suddenly (snark) in love:
"Clinton… has done more than any other Democrat to show she’s ready to be president."
And Rush Limbaugh said, on Tuesday, that he rose out of his chair when Obama spoke up on Monday night (from his pay-to-view transcripts):
“Oh, my goodness, folks, I cannot believe this. I stood up in my chair last night when I heard this. If Iraq collapses, Iran and Syria are going to have responsibilities? How is Iraq going to collapse? Only if we pull out. So if people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton get their way, we pull out of there, then Iraq collapses, then we turn it over to Iran and Syria, and they're going to have responsibility, and we got a tell them about it? Do you understand, this is caving in, this is giving away an opportunity here to establish a little beachhead of freedom in that part of the world so desperately needed, he wants to turn it over to a couple of thuggish terrorist sponsoring regimes after he talks to them and tells them what their responsibilities are. Stabilize the region? Anyway, Mrs. Clinton decided that she had a different opinion about this approach.”
The wingers are upset based on the merits: They definitely don't want a break with the failed policies of the past in which, gasp, the US president will meet with Hugo Chavez. They're stuck in a dangerous mindset that harms the true interests of the United States people to live in a safer and better world.
And they're upset! So upset that their ideological dominance over how the US conducts foreign policy that they're praising Hillary Clinton whom they will no doubt return to demonize soon enough. Rogue nations? When that "rogue's gallery" of pundits is singing in unison in praise of a Democrat, a la Lieberman, something is terribly wrong with that Democrat's position.
Well, almost all of them are upset...
To be fair, one contrarian conservative and veteran of the Reagan White House, Pat Buchanan, believes Obama is “not wrong,” And alone among them he documents his claims in detail:
Should not the United States be in constant contact with those we see as enemies, to prevent irreconcilable differences from leading us into war? Here, Obama's instincts are not wrong.
During World War II and the Cold War, FDR and Harry Truman met with Josef Stalin. Ike invited the "Butcher of Budapest" for a 10-day tour of the United States and tete-À-tete at Camp David. JFK met Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna - after he declared, "We will bury you." Richard Nixon went to China and toasted the tyrant responsible for the deaths of thousands of GIs in Korea and greatest mass murderer of the last century, Mao Zedong.
None of the five with whom Obama said he would meet is in the same league with these monsters of the 20th century.
Kim Jong-il has not launched a war on South Korea or tried to assassinate its prime minister and entire cabinet, as his father, Kim Il-Sung, did. Syria's Bashir al-Assad has yet to fight his first war and has never perpetrated the kind of massacre his father did in Homa. Yet, George H.W. Bush welcomed Hafez al-Assad as a fighting ally in the Persian Gulf War…
Hugo Chavez is an anti-American demagogue, but also the twice-elected president of Venezuela. How does he threaten "The Republic That Never Retreats"?
Of course, to say that democratically elected Hugo Chavez is a “dictator” while relying on military strongman Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan as US ally – something Senator Clinton reportedly advocates - is pandering hypocrisy. Read about Musharraf here, and then dare to tell us that the next American president shouldn’t meet with Hugo Chavez.
Long before Madeline Albright was sent out Tuesday by the Clinton campaign to whack Obama’s statement, she had signed a letter advocating Obama’s position.
Oh, please. Are there any intellectually honest Clinton supporters here ready to take a stand on principle and try to point their candidate toward a better course?
To me, this argument is not about Clinton vs. Obama. It is about setting the stage for the next presidency, its stance before the world, and how the world sees America.
“To see ourselves as others see us, it would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notion.”
For the good of the United States of America, Obama must win this argument. I think it will soon be evident that he has. Time will tell.