“The Neocons’ Long Game”: Don’t Expect Fuzzy Moderate Feelings To Last If Romney Ends Up In The White House
Most of the snap polls taken after last night’s foreign policy debate, the last before the November 6 election, gave the win the President Obama—if not an outright knockout then at least a TKO on points. But beyond the candidates themselves, the debate did have one clear loser: neoconservatives.
During the many years Mitt Romney has been running for president, he’s taken a number of fluid positions on foreign policy. In addition to reflecting Romney’s character as an eager-to-please shape-shifter, the changing positions also represent a genuine—and growing—policy tension among foreign policy factions within the GOP establishment.
Even though old school realists like Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft retain some influence, and more isolationist voices like Senator Rand Paul represent a rising challenge, the neoconservatives remain the most dominant. But even though Romney had worked diligently since 2009 to build ties to the GOP’s neoconservative wing, and relies heavily on a number of them as his key advisers, the foreign policy vision he articulated last night indicates that he understands that American voters (at least the ones he needs to eke out an Electoral College victory) just aren’t that into the expensive, world-transformative schemes that neocons are still busy dreaming up.
Romney’s new foreign policy tack was evident on the very first question of the night, in which moderator Bob Schieffer served the issue of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks to him on a plate. Romney chose not to re-boot his fumbled criticism of the Obama administration from the last debate, something his hawkish surrogates and the GOP’s Fox News annex have been pushing hard for over the last week. Rather, Romney chose to draw back to a broader view of a region in chaos. His Obama-esque declaration that “We can’t kill our way out of this mess,” while surely appealing to voters tired of war in the Middle East, was sure to disappoint the neocons, for whom there are few problems in the world that can’t be solved through the application of American ordnance.
It wouldn’t be the last time Romney echoed the president last night. With regard to the prospect of U.S. military interventions, Romney insisted that “We don’t want another Iraq,” even though neocons still proclaim the Iraq war a success (a commanding majority of Americans disagrees). On Iraq itself, though he criticized the failure to achieve a new status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, Romney recoiled from President Obama’s suggestion that he didn’t support withdrawing American troops. On Syria and Afghanistan, Romney took positions 180 degree opposite what his neoconservative supporters have been advocating, assuring viewers that “I don’t want to have our military involved” in the former, and agreeing with President Obama’s withdrawal timetable for the latter.
One moment where Romney did let his inner neocon out to play was in his claim that President Obama’s efforts to engage the Iranians in diplomatic talks were taken by Iran as a sign of weakness. “I think from the very beginning, one of the challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this administration and—and felt that the administration was not as strong as it needed to be,” Romney said. “I think they saw weakness where they had expected to find American strength.”
First, when one considers how Iran’s hardliners profited—both domestically and in regional influence—from the Bush administration’s reckless show of “strength” in the Middle East, this claim falls apart. But it also seriously misunderstands the manner in which U.S. diplomatic outreach to Iran has discombobulated an Iranian regime that much prefers to deal with an openly hostile U.S. government.
As Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar noted, President Obama “called this regime’s bluff by recognizing it. This is the worst thing you can do to your enemy, to unmask them.” Exploring this dynamic in a 2010 column, David Ignatius wrote, “White House officials argue that their strategy of engagement has been a form of pressure, and the evidence supports them.”
Perhaps the most brutal moment of the night was President Obama’s takedown of Romney’s claim that the president had gone on an “apology tour” after taking office, a treasured conservative myth despite its pantaloons being rendered aflame by virtually every fact-checking organization in existence. True to form, the Romney campaign blasted out a new “Apology Tour” ad this morning, which notably doesn’t include any footage of President Obama apologizing.
It tells us a lot about Romney’s lack of a clear foreign policy agenda that this was the moment his campaign thought most-worthy of highlighting from last night—a cheap attack based not on any substantive policy difference, but a stylistic difference founded on a complete falsehood, the idea that President Obama hasn’t proclaimed or exerted American power boldly enough.
Which is why, despite Romney’s momentary embrace of President Obama’s policies, we should still be concerned with the role that neoconservatives would play in a Romney administration. It’s important to keep in mind that, as a candidate, Governor George W. Bush made a lot of moderate, reasonable-sounding noises about foreign policy too. But when faced with a crisis on 9/11, the inexperienced president with unformed foreign policy ideas fell back on the comforting but naive idea that America’s greatness could be proclaimed, and its deterrence re-established, through the massive exercise of military force. The next president will likely face a similar crisis, even if not likely on the scale of 9/11. It very much matters who has his ear.
By: Matthew Duss, The American Prospect, October 23, 2012
“Bald-Faced Romney”: Lying As Easy As He Breathes
One of the most dramatic moments of the three presidential debates occurred during Monday night’s foreign-policy finale. In a back-and-forth over diplomacy with Iran, Mitt Romney threw Barack Obama a bone by repeating his persistent claim that the president had gone on an “apology tour” in 2009. The baseless notion of Obama “apologizing for America” has been a central theme from the start of Romney’s campaign, and his opponent was ready to jump on it: “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true,” Obama said. “Starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has probably been the biggest whopper told during this campaign.”
There was more, and it was damning for Romney. But in the aftermath, the Republican’s response set a bold new standard for shamelessness (not an easy thing for a politician to do). This morning, his campaign blasted out a brand-new “Apology Tour” ad—containing zero evidence to support the lie he won’t let die.
Both Romney and his campaign have made it abundantly clear they believe that American voters have grown so cynical about politics and politicians that they don’t care whether a presidential candidate is a bald-faced liar. Which, if it’s true, would be a terrible thing for the country—and a fortuitous thing for Romney, since he has proven himself to be a man who lies as easily and casually as he breathes.
If Romney wins the White House, this will put the country in uncharted territory. Sure, we’ve had plenty of lying presidents (and almost all of them could be called “fibbing presidents,” at least.) Just in recent decades, we saw Bill Clinton lie about “sexual relations with that woman”; we saw Richard Nixon tell terrible whoppers about Watergate; we watched LBJ lie about Vietnam. But there was a qualitative difference: Those presidents, at least, knew that they were lying. Have we ever had a commander-in-chief who could not distinguish between truth and fiction, as appears to be the case with Romney?
God only knows what kind of president Romney might turn out to be if he’s elected—center-right, some believe, or (far more likely) a prisoner of his party’s right wing. But there’s one thing we can count on: He will lie to us, and then lie some more. And American politics, hard as it is to fathom, will descend to a whole new, far deeper, level of cynicism.
By: Bob Moser, The American Prospect, October 23, 2012
“The Secret Of Our Non-Success”: Mitt Romney Will Make Policy Based On Fantasies Rather Than Grappling With Reality.
The U.S. economy finally seems to be recovering in earnest, with housing on the rebound and job creation outpacing growth in the working-age population. But the news is good, not great — it will still take years to restore full employment — and it has been a very long time coming. Why has the slump been so protracted?
The answer — backed by overwhelming evidence — is that this is what normally happens after a severe financial crisis. But Mitt Romney’s economic team rejects that evidence. And this denialism bodes ill for policy if Mr. Romney wins next month.
About the evidence: The most famous study is by Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who looked at past financial crises and found that such crises are typically followed by years of high unemployment and weak growth. Later work by economists at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere confirmed this analysis: crises that followed a sharp run-up in private-sector debt, from the U.S. Panic of 1893 to the Swedish banking crisis of the early 1990s, cast long shadows over the economy’s future. There was no reason to believe that this time would be different.
This isn’t an after-the-fact rationalization. The Reinhart-Rogoff “aftermath” paper was released almost four years ago. And a number of other economists, including, well, me, issued similar warnings. In early 2008 I was already pointing out the distinction between recessions like 1973-5 or 1981-2, brought on by high interest rates, and “postmodern” recessions brought on by private-sector overreach. And I suggested that the recession we were then entering would be followed by a prolonged “jobless recovery” that would feel like a continuing recession.
Why is recovery from a financial crisis slow? Financial crises are preceded by credit bubbles; when those bubbles burst, many families and/or companies are left with high levels of debt, which force them to slash their spending. This slashed spending, in turn, depresses the economy as a whole.
And the usual response to recession, cutting interest rates to encourage spending, isn’t adequate. Many families simply can’t spend more, and interest rates can be cut only so far — namely, to zero but not below.
Does this mean that nothing can be done to avoid a protracted slump after a financial crisis? No, it just means that you have to do more than just cut interest rates. In particular, what the economy really needs after a financial crisis is a temporary increase in government spending, to sustain employment while the private sector repairs its balance sheet. And the Obama administration did some of that, blunting the severity of the financial crisis. Unfortunately, the stimulus was both too small and too short-lived, partly because of administration errors but mainly because of scorched-earth Republican obstruction.
Which brings us to the politics.
Over the past few months advisers to the Romney campaign have mounted a furious assault on the notion that financial-crisis recessions are different. For example, in July former Senator Phil Gramm and Columbia’s R. Glenn Hubbard published an op-ed article claiming that we should be having a recovery comparable to the bounceback from the 1981-2 recession, while a white paper from Romney advisers argues that the only thing preventing a rip-roaring boom is the uncertainty created by President Obama.
Obviously, Republicans like claiming that it’s all Mr. Obama’s fault, and that electing Mr. Romney would magically make everything better. But nobody should believe them.
For one thing, these people have a track record: back in 2008, when serious students of history were already predicting a prolonged slump, Mr. Gramm was dismissing America as a “nation of whiners” experiencing a mere “mental recession.” For another, if Mr. Obama is the problem, why is the United States actually doing better than most other advanced countries?
The main point, however, is that the Romney team is willfully, nakedly, distorting the record, leading Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff — who aren’t affiliated with either campaign — to protest against “gross misinterpretations of the facts.” And this should worry you.
Look, economics isn’t as much of a science as we’d like. But when there’s overwhelming evidence for an economic proposition — as there is for the proposition that financial-crisis recessions are different — we have the right to expect politicians and their advisers to respect that evidence. Otherwise, they’ll end up making policy based on fantasies rather than grappling with reality.
And once politicians start refusing to acknowledge inconvenient facts, where does it stop? Why, the next thing you know Republicans will start rejecting the overwhelming evidence for man-made climate change. Oh, wait.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 21, 2012
“The Romney-Ryan Budget”: A Sketchy Plan That Makes Social Security Less Secure
With Election Day two weeks away, my series of posts on the Romney-Ryan budget plan is drawing to a close. Today I’m writing about the changes GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have in store for Social Security, and in my final post I’ll cover other social programs on the chopping block and call attention to who stands to profit should Romney’s sketchy deal become reality.
First, any meaningful discussion of Social Security calls for the airing of three simple truths:
Truth #1 – Social Security has played a major role in reducing poverty in the United States for 75 years. Today, one in every six U.S. residents collects Social Security benefits. Included in this group are retirees, people with disabilities and young survivors of deceased parents. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the program keeps 21.4 million women, men and children from living in poverty. People like Social Security because it works and it’s reliable. Wall Street is risky. But Social Security hasn’t missed a payment since the first benefit was issued in 1937.
Truth #2 – Social Security is even more important to women because we live longer than men and typically retire with less savings than men. When you think about it, it’s not hard to see why that is so. On average, women are paid less than men, either due to outright wage discrimination or because women are clustered into low-paying fields. Over a lifetime, this disparity really adds up. Additionally, women are less likely than men to work for employers that provide pensions, and we often take time out of the paid workforce to care for children or other family members. Women of color retire at an even greater economic disadvantage than white women.
Truth #3 – Wealthy conservatives have been after Social Security since its inception. This is not a delusion — it’s a fact. For decades, right-wing think tanks have hatched several key myths and sound bites that politicians have repeated over and over again: The program is going bankrupt; the money’s gone; it’s a Ponzi scheme. These messages have sunk so deeply into the consciousness of this nation that you often hear people under 40 or even 50 state that “Social Security won’t be there for me when I retire.” Encouraged financial moguls and their congressional water-carriers have made numerous moves toward privatizing Social Security, including a big push in the 1980s and again under the presidency of George W. Bush.
Here’s a compelling way of looking at the situation: Truth #1 — the success of Social Security and its corresponding support from voters — has prevented Truth #3 from producing any concrete progress. But Truth #2 keeps the efforts of Truth #3 alive — meaning, conservative elites are much more likely to continue trying to dismantle a social insurance system that disproportionately benefits women and particularly women of color. It’s so much easier to funnel other people’s money into the risky stock market when you truly do see them as different, undeserving, not peers — literally as “the Other.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that Romney and Ryan share the right-wing thirst for converting Social Security to a private program under which billions of previously safeguarded dollars would flow into Wall Street traders’ hands. But these guys know their agenda is so deeply unpopular with the vast majority of voters that they have to tread very carefully, blurring their ultimate goal.
So, the Romney-Ryan budget plan is fairly cryptic on the subject. Here’s what it has to say: “[T]his budget calls for action on Social Security by requiring both the President and the Congress to put forward specific ideas and legislation to ensure the sustainable solvency of this critical program.” The budget raises suggestions such as “reforms that take into account increases in longevity, to arrest the demographic problems that are undermining Social Security’s finances.” In other words, raise the retirement age. The Romney-Ryan plan claims that “[t]he solutions are clear,” but it doesn’t really commit to anything specific.
The Oct. 11 vice presidential debate did offer a glimpse at the contrasting philosophies held by those who want to quell the panic and take responsible steps toward protecting and improving Social Security versus those who want to stir up enough public distrust in the system that gambling on Wall Street will seem like a viable alternative.
When asked about the program, Rep. Paul Ryan pulled out a string of classic right-wing scare tactics: “If we don’t shore up Social Security, when we run out of the IOUs, when the program goes bankrupt, a 25 percent across-the-board benefit cut kicks in on current seniors in the middle of their retirement.”
Vice President Joe Biden replied: “If we had listened to Romney, Governor Romney, and the congressman during the Bush years, imagine where all those seniors would be now if their money had been in the market.”
Ryan pulled out the standard caveat that he’s not talking about changing the system for people who have already retired or are about to retire: “[W]hat I’ve always agreed is let younger Americans have a voluntary choice of making their money work faster for them within the Social Security system.”
But what about the single mom — one of Ryan’s “younger Americans” — who’s working two jobs trying to support her family when suddenly all the money in her private retirement account is gone because Wall Street had another collapse? Now she has to start all over again. Is that fair? Is it even remotely wise to put the people of our nation, the people who drive our economy, at such risk?
Romney and Ryan know that there is no compelling reason to turn Social Security over to the private market. Those with enough money to invest in the market can already do so. But most people need the economic security that comes from a stable system of retirement insurance that isn’t out to make its shareholders rich.
You may be asking yourself at this point: But isn’t Social Security in danger of falling behind, now that the Baby Boomers are starting to retire? Don’t we need to do something?
Yes, we do. But we don’t have to settle for what the privatizers are selling us. After all, they’re working for the one-hundredth of one percent, not us. In fact, the elites’ lobbyists have produced policies that are draining money from the Social Security trust fund. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “Low- and middle-income workers and their families would have had far better income growth over the past 30 years if economic policies had not directed the fruits of economic growth to the highest-income Americans.” In effect, fairer wages would have resulted in more payroll taxes going into the system for the last three decades.
Elites, meanwhile, have enjoyed drastically lower payroll tax rates than the rest of us. Currently, there is a cap on the amount of a worker’s wages that are subject to Social Security deductions: If you make less than $110,100, all of your salary is in play; if you are paid more than that, everything over $110,100 is in the clear. For most of us, the payroll tax is about six percent. But for someone earning $1 million per year, it’s 0.6 percent! You see, as income in this country increasingly shifts to higher earners, less and less money flows into the Social Security pool.
This May, the National Organization for Women Foundation put out a report along with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Foundation and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Unlike the Social Security raiders, we see the good in the system — its strengths and potential. Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling: A Proposal to Modernize Women’s Benefits presents 10 improvements, such as providing credits for caregivers, that would make Social Security more equitable while safeguarding benefits for women. Simply eliminating the cap on payroll contributions would pay for the vast majority of these improvements and ensure the system’s solvency for at least 75 years. A higher minimum wage and a lower unemployment rate would pay for the rest by creating higher payrolls, thus more contributions into the system. Small tweaks in the payroll tax rate are also both feasible and promising.
Big business and the wealthy, who have an outsized influence on our discourse, will fight tooth and nail against common-sense options like these. They will generously fund the campaigns of their wealthy friends, like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and do all they can to control the media outlets from which the voters get their information.
Women like Linda, who would be completely dependent on her daughter if it weren’t for her monthly Social Security check, rarely have a voice in this process. But they do have a voice at the polls on Election Day. The people’s greatest defense against attacks on Social Security is our voting power. And politicians know it.
That is why Romney and Ryan are working so hard to downplay their Social Security plans. But we need to send them the message that women are not fooled. We may not have access to their billions of dollars, but we can and must use our votes to let them know: Social Security is ours, and we will continue to protect it for generations to come.
By: Terry O’Neil, President, National Organization for Women; The Huffington Post, October 22, 2012
“Troubling To Think What Might Happen”: Why A Romney Win Would Be Bad For America
There’s a strong case against Mitt Romney’s candidacy that has nothing to do with ideology. Which is probably a good thing, because no one really knows where Romney fits on the ideological spectrum, and if he really has any deeply held policy views at all.
My own sense, as I’ve written before, is that Romney’s party label tells us pretty much all we need to know about how he’d govern. He’s the nominee of a party that has adopted a far-right platform, and if he were to win he’d have little choice but to stick to it. Conservatives have long viewed Romney’s ideological credentials with skepticism; under a Romney presidency, they’d be perpetually on-guard for any hint of betrayal. Failure to govern as the conservative he swore he was during the GOP primaries would open a rift in the party and threaten to destroy his presidency.
But part of Romney’s appeal to swing voters is an assumption that he’s faking it – that he said the words he needed to say to win the Republican nomination, but that as president he’d revert to Massachusetts Mitt, the middle-of-the-road pragmatist who shunned culture war politics and wasn’t averse to working with Democrats. I have a hard time seeing this, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it actually is his intent. Even then – and even if you think this would work out OK for the country from a policy standpoint – there’s still a compelling reason to fear a Romney win on November 6.
The basic problem has to do with the behavior of Romney’s party over the past four years – reflexive opposition and obstruction rooted in electoral strategy, not ideology – and the lesson that politicians from both parties would draw if it results in a one-term Obama presidency.
Essentially, Republicans looked around when Obama was sworn-in and saw political opportunity. They had lost the White House and faced steep Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. In a way, this made them weak; they had no power to advance their own agenda. But it also gave them strength; they had considerable power to stall Obama’s agenda, and with economic anxiety rampant, it seemed logical to assume voters would blame the ruling party if things didn’t turn around quickly.
The result is that Republicans devoted themselves not to constructively criticizing Democratic proposals, crafting feasible alternatives, and accepting olive branches from the administration but instead to cranking up the hysteria and treating virtually every Obama initiative as a step toward socialism. They matched this with legislative obstruction, tying up scores nominations, forcing a record number of filibusters, and forcing Democrats to pass their agenda on party-line votes.
The calculation was that Republican cooperation would signal to the public that progress was being made and that Obama was living up to his promise to change Washington. But if they railed against him and his agenda instead, Republicans would create an air of controversy around every Obama proposal and bring his approval rating down that much faster.
Mostly cut out of this equation has been policy. Congressional Republicans bitterly deride the stimulus, even though it was loaded up with tax cuts and infrastructure spending that Republicans had traditionally supported. But where was their viable alternative? Healthcare is even more egregious. Obama spent months cultivating Republican support and adopted a basic framework – an individual mandate that would strengthen private insurers – that originated on the right. Not only did they unanimously oppose it; they’ve still failed to produce their own plan to replace the Affordable Care Act – despite promising to do so for more than two years. And while they did rally around Paul Ryan’s long-term budget blueprint, Republicans have had nothing to say on the country’s immediate jobs crisis, offering only tired rhetoric about high taxes and wasteful government. And, as Jonathan Bernstein points out, they’ve offered nothing substantive on foreign policy, settling instead for fake scandals and symbolism.
If Romney wins in two weeks, Republicans may well find themselves with complete control of Washington again. And they will have achieved it by doing nothing but opposing, attacking and obstructing Obama. As Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann explain in “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” this kind of conduct by an opposition party works in parliamentary democracies like Britain. But our system isn’t designed for it. If Republicans win back power with it, though, there’s no reason to think they won’t behave the same way again the next time Democrats claim power. For that matter, it’s possible Democrats will begin to behave the same way.
This last point is worth considering for a moment. There’s a school of thought that Democrats will always be open to entreaties from a Republican president, for the simple reason that they believe in an active and robust government. So, for instance, that George W. Bush found Democratic support – sometimes significant Democratic support – during his first term, even though Democrats were still furious over how he’d won the presidency. But if Republicans succeed in making Obama a one-termer, who’s to say how Democrats will react – and if their party base will even allow any cooperation with President Romney? (Again, this is accepting the idea that Romney would even try to reach out.)
Elections shape the behavior of political parties. Recall that Bill Clinton got more cooperation from Republicans as he beat them (first with the 1995 shutdown, then in the 1996 election), to the point that Republicans ultimately went looking for their own Clinton in 2000, keying in on the affable George W. Bush and his compassionate conservatism. The GOP’s post-2008 behavior has not been healthy for our system of government. It’s troubling to think what might happen if it’s rewarded.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, October 22, 2012
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