Readers: I started this before and had to stop. Easter Mass was beckoning. Here is the completed version.
Leslie Gelb was on CSPAN this morning promoting his new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy. And, in short, he made a lot of sense.
Some might remember Gelb as the guy who teamed up with Biden, prior to Biden announcing for the presidency, to craft a plan for Iraq. At the time, Iraq was a mess, with sectarian killings amounting to scores each day. Shiite and Sunni, mostly, were doing their best to annihilate one another, while the Kurds just hoped it all stayed south of them. Gelb and Biden suggested a loose confederation of states within an otherwise unified Iraq: basically, a Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni state, each of which could fashion its own local police force, and pass local laws in keeping with local needs and culture, while the central government was responsible for the army, national security in general, and, especially, the distribution of oil revenues among the three states. Gelb and Biden's point at the time was that this was happening in reality on the ground anyway, and that codifying it could provide some structure and, hopefully, relief from the sectarian mayhem. I don't know if any more has come of that, particularly the codification part. But, fundamentally, this was an attempt by Gelb and Biden to take a common sense approach to the problem in Iraq. Incidentally, their model for Iraq was similar to the model which brought peace to Bosnia, where in that conflict it was Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims killing each other. So, whether you liked the plan or didn't at the time, it was a pragmatic plan, based on real-world events, and an observation and appreciation of that which had worked in Bosnia, and similarly in Northern Ireland.
This time Gelb was trying to make common sense more generally with respect to American geo-political goals, and what those goals should be, and should not be. In short, he said the goals should be honest, public, and constrained by that which we believe can reasonably be accomplished.
They should be honest and public in that we should not bluster one thing and do another. He said that only ever makes America look weaker, but that there are tremendous pressures brought to bear on any American president to sound tough. The thinking is "We are the United States! Leader of the free world! If we don't say 'This won't stand' whom does the job fall to, the French?" One of Gelb's points is that that argument often carries the day, and the U.S. government or president makes some statement as President Obama did following the North Korean missile test, a very tough-sounding statement which inferred tough action, stating that Security Council resolutions have to mean something if violated. President Bush made the very same argument against Saddam Hussein in girding for war in Iraq. President Bush followed through. But here Gelb would say Bush committed the other mistake, which is attempting something which is beyond American power alone to accomplish.
Bush followed Ronald Reagan's lead of not giving a hoot about public borrowing to accomplish his presidential ends. He mimicked Reagan again by pursuing the ideological goal of deeply cutting taxes at the same time as he borrowed to accomplish his presidential ends. Meaning he had to borrow that much more. He had to borrow enough to offset the shortfall he was implementing in Treasury revenues through his tax cut, plus the extra to meet his presidential ends. And what were those ends? For Reagan, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - a first of its kind attempt to build a missile defense shield around the U.S. Reagan borrowed to fund SDI and just generally to buy a lot more military hardware. Those were his ends. Reagan had to borrow to pay for that. He also had to borrow for every dollar decrease to the Treasury from his deep tax cut because he didn't offset his tax cut with any cuts in government spending. As I mentioned, he dramatically increased government spending overall, with the Defense Department getting the lion's share. For Bush, his ends were conquering Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein. As well as fighting terrorism. But his attention on Al Qaeda shifted almost immediately from Al Qaeda to Iraq after 9/11, which many from his administration, documented in several books, say was his focus from day one.
Gelb says the kinds of ambitions which Reagan had for SDI, and which Bush had for a free Iraq, particularly if they have to be bought on a gargantuan national credit card, are a bridge too far for this country, and a greater threat to America than either a missile attack or Saddam Hussein combined.
I agree. We are getting to where we don't trust the wisdom and motivations of our presidents. Anyone who doesn't think this is a bad thing for democracy please step up and comment to that effect on this blog. I worry now with President Obama that his ends, admittedly, much different and more liberal than Reagan's or Bush's, are being similarly pursued with but a scant eye to the deficit, much less the total national debt. Obama's investments in health care, education, new energy, and infrastructure are all investments which for far too long, and to the far too great detriment of this country, have been back-burnered to fund weapons technologies of various kinds - SDI and others - or, in the case of Iraq, to fund a hugely expensive war and goal which did not have the support, and therefore funding, of the rest of the world. They have also been back-burned by a sequence of Republican presidents who somehow, quite unbelievably, have failed to see their import, even, quite literally, their national-security import to this country, since we are a country of guns and butter made strong by the ample supply and quality of both. But Obama is trying to be the anti-Reagan, the anti-Bushes, all at once. And, once again, Gelb would say this is a bridge too far.
If Obama attempts to do too much he will have ruined any chance at truly changing political and national priorities in this country. If he takes a bad balance sheet, made bad by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and makes it worse by making one of their worst mistakes, forgoing fiscal and budgetary discipline to further his presidential aims, then he will have lent his endorsement to their mistake, and made the "change we need", and the kind Gelb advances, further from us.
Obama is frustrated. I suspect he is beyond that, that he is nothing short of angry that three Republican presidents have done what, since Reagan, Republicans and conservatives have ideologically threatened to do, and that is "starve the beast". The thought there, quite radical, quite revolutionary for those who call themselves "conservative", is to put the United States into so much debt that it cannot afford anything but the smallest role for the central government - likely, defense, coining money, and interstate commerce - plus the interest payment on the debt. It's equivalent to the homeowner who gets into such debt that, after making all the minimum payments for the month has only enough left over to eat.
It is the ideological vision of Reagan, who said famously that government is not a solution to our problems, but that government IS the problem. Starve the beast. It's the ideological vision of George W. Bush. More defense, deep tax cuts, borrow. Starve the beast. Well, we have yet to in a short span have enough presidents like Reagan and the Bushes to starve the beast, but the beast is hungry. President Obama is hungry. He is hungry to pay for and invest in the things which he believes have been neglected for a long time (and have been) and which he believe we need to be a better country (and we do). But if he ignores the fact that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were at least somewhat successful in what to me is truly nothing short of a treacherous attempt to bankrupt this country in order to force the central government to recede to its most minimal responsibilities of defense, money, and commerce, and with that deconstruct the social safety net fashioned during the New Deal and Great Society (you don't have to believe me, conservative publications readily acknowledge this as their goal), if Obama ignore the success those 3 past presidents had in creating the national debt we have today, some $15 trillion, and the further $1.7 trillion dollar deficit for this year, and simply does as they did, and pursues his goals without heed to the debt, making it thereby inevitably worse during his presidency, then in the eyes of many, and with considerable justification, he will be seen as no better.
And that's Gelb's point, and his admonition. Say what you can to. Don't say threatening things to North Korea about their launch unless you truly plan to do something threatening. And don't let your ideology, presidential ambitions, or impatience amplify our greatest threat following the presidencies of Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and that is the deep fiscal and deficit crisis we find ourselves in, and which we are counting on him to improve, and not make worse.
SPEND SPEND SPEND!
Lets keep on raising the national debt! Why not? Unfortunately, our national debt is going to have to be the byproduct of bigger government, which is just what we need to get us out of this horrible economic state that we're in.
We suffer from a wretched sickness called selfish greed. It is a philosophical problem. "I want better roads, and I don't want that bridge to collapse, but someone else has to pay for it. Go ahead and fire all of the teachers, but not my son's."
We live in a society. And society has always worked best whenever people made some sacrifices and gave up some of theirs, so that other people would have a safety cushion. Reagan, Bushites, and even Clinton decided to take away all of those protections and allowed corporations to get tax refunds from their headquarters in a hut, in the Fiji Islands; instead of paying their fair share.
It's now time to pay the piper. It's time to raise taxes, spend money, make government big again. Big, but honest.
We need a new deal. George Bush let the AIGs, JP Morgans, Citibanks, and Bear Sterns run free; now it's time to slap them silly.
My biggest worry? That Obama is siding with the lobbyists from the financial industry, (read Bear Sterns), that created the mess that we're in.
Where're our tax dollars that went to AIG bonuses? Have they given it back yet?
Remember, China keeps investing in the USA's ability to spend above our means. Because no other people on this planet can spend money that they/we don't have like Americans. Until we slap American corporations, and tax them so that they cannot monopolize; we need to spend away. Because the population in China, Europe, and India will not buy things.
Posted by: Jim Gordon | April 15, 2009 at 06:18 PM