NOtesonline: Special Election 2004 Issue

The social democratic community in the United States shows the strains of this year's Presidential election debates. Several writers and correspondents worry that Senator Kerry's mind still inhabits a Vietnam paradigm. But there is also great uneasiness about President Bush's political and diplomatic capabilities for seeing the Iraq venture through to an acceptable outcome. The Bush Administration's vigorous if somewhat belated embrace of democracy as a key element in turning the Broader Middle East onto the path to modernity, economic development, responsible government, and serious efforts toward conflict resolution is one that many strongly support. Senator Kerry has also endorsed this as a long-term solution. But will he be willing to play the kind of hardball – both militarily and politically -- to prevent terrorists and brute dictators from blocking the path to democracy in the region?

Those who bring some element of social democratic values and ideas to this predicament are also likely to be interested in the candidates' records and platforms on domestic issues. President Bush's tax cutting, deficit spending, and attitudes on labor and government social services stir disquiet. Senator Kerry's domestic program is that of a moderate Democrat, more congenial to a role for government and to constituencies that are not favored by economic power.

Below we offer our readers a smorgasboard of links and comments from varying perspectives on some engaging commentary we have come across on the choice we face tomorrow.

Perhaps the most effective pro-Kerry piece here is Andrew Sullivan's from the New Republic on-line--Why I Am Supporting Kerry". Sullivan supported Bush in 2000, and has been a fixture on the American Enterprise Institute and similar conservative circuits. So his declaration comes as a bit of a surprise. This piece is probably pretty close to what many in our circles are thinking.

Some of the anti-Kerry pieces include a barbed reprise of Kerry's record as an anti-Vietnam war activist and proponent of normalization of relations between the US and communist Vietnam by William Kristol, who draws the inference that Kerry would put undue pressure on Israel to accommodate its adversaries. Daniel Drezner's blog quotes a former US diplomat who, he reports, also served in the Clinton Administration: "…French, German and Russian interests are now clearly arrayed in a classic balance of power position against the U.S. This will not change with Kerry in the White House. As for other allies (minus the UK and Australia), we're the victims of our Cold War success -- most participants in Iraq are already projecting about as much power as they possibly can, having comfortably atrophied under our security umbrella for the past 60 years. This is the burden of hegemony, and I'm not quite sure Senator Kerry, whose mind still fully inhabits the Vietnam paradigm, is up to the task of bearing it forthrightly."

Robert Leiken is joined by the venerable Walter Lacqueur and others in an anti-Kerry symposium on the sharp-edged Front Page magazine web site. Laqueur notes that in the so-called war on terrorism , “Western counter propaganda is virtually non-existent, political use should be made of the mistakes of the terrorists.” Robert Leiken argues that “We should consider reviving USIA and giving it the mission of carrying out ideological war on behalf of religious toleration.”

A new reproach to the UN, the Europeans, and to Kerry and his key advisers on Middle East issues comes from Martin Peretz, whose earlier critique we cited in our last issue.

For a walk on the anti-Bush side take a look at an article we reproduced from the Democratic Leadership Council's publication “Blueprint Magazine” by former YPSL leader Marshall Wittman. In Marshall's view the Bush Administration is little more than a chronicle of missed opportunities. Jude Wanniski, evangelist for supply-side economics, finds that Bush's deficit spending nevertheless disqualifies him for a second term. Christopher Hitchens has also written some pungent anti-Bush and pro-Kerry polemics, but Ron Radosh e-mails that there may be some uncertainty as to just how Hitchens will actually vote.

Subject: The Challenge to Europe's Center Left

Anthony Giddens, one of the principal thinkers behind the”Third Way” strategy for the British Labour Party, ruminates on the challenges before the faltering European Center Left in a recent issue of The New Statesman. He says that “In one key respect, however, [British] Labour was ahead of the game: it believed that no area should be treated as 'belonging to the right.' Labour should generate left-of-centre solutions to 'rightist' problems - such as those to do with crime or immigration.

”Other social-democratic parties in Europe came round to such a standpoint too late. The Jospin government, for example, started to talk about crime reduction only late in its electoral campaign, and failed to convince the French electorate of its sincerity.

”The Danish Social Democrats fell from power after they failed to anticipate and respond to a wave of right-wing populism, led by the anti-immigration Danish People's Party. Similarly, in the Netherlands, the ruling 'purple coalition' was shocked to find itself ejected from government as a result of the rise of the anti-immigration campaigner Pim Fortuyn.

”How can the left revive its fortunes? Despite what many have written on the subject, the populist parties as such are not a major problem for social-democratic parties. They tend to be intrinsically unstable, depending as they do on the appeal of 'anti-political politicians.'

“Much more consequential for social democracy are the conditions that lead to right-wing populism. The stresses and strains of globalisation have created a new schism in our society. On one side are those who are at ease (or relatively so) with technological advance and the cosmopolitan interchange of cultures, and who possess the qualifications to do well in the new economy. On the other side - much further down the socio-economic scale -- are those, often lacking in skills or qualifications, who feel that their jobs or even their way of life are threatened. These groups blame the 'establishment' or 'outsiders' or both for what is going on, and are easily attracted by racist or xeno-phobic sentiments. Many are erstwhile social-democratic voters who feel let down or disenfranchised by the mainstream parties.”

Editors' Note: For strategy program on how trade unions and their allies could reach those who understandably fear that their lack of skills and grasp of new technologies has put them at great risk in our fast-paced economy, see the Report of the Task Force on Workforce Development sponsored by the New Economy Information Service and The Albert Shanker Institute.

Osama and the "More Humble Foreign Policy."

In reading the assorted indictments of Senator Kerry's weaknesses and fickleness on foreign policy and national security issues, one does find matters that provide some reason for concern. But there are also reminders that President George W. Bush ran against President Bill Clinton -- whose record has been excoriated by Republicans during this past campaign -- on a platform pledging that his would be a "more humble foreign policy." It's hard to avoid the implication that he meant even more humble than Clinton's foreign policy.

The 9/11 attacks are said to have aroused this President Bush from his humility. Thankfully, no Democrat has made the charge that Bush's "more humble" 2000 campaign speeches are responsible for tempting Osama Bin Laden to believe that he could assault the World Trade Towers with impunity. You have to wonder, though, what some in the Bush 2004 re-election campaign might have done with a little plum like this.

Axis of Evil – And Mindlessness.

President Bush's use of “axis of evil” to describe a group of governments that seemed bent on possessing weapons of mass destruction, open to relations with terrorist groups, and brutally repressive toward their own people -- Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- provoked critics to challenge whether these countries and those allied with them really constitute anything even remotely comparable to the Axis Powers of WWII.

Some found it excessively moralistic to label these governments and groups “evil.” Here is another question: Do we possibly play into their hands by playing up so much how vicious and brutal they are? Don't these kinds of people exploit their reputations for viciousness? Didn't Saddam himself work hard on his reputation for being evil? Think of others who have put that aura to work: Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hitler's SS deathsquads. There's even “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown. . .badder than old King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog.”

Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham recently described the abject lack of any political concept among the so-called “insurgents” in Iraq. The story quotes Ahmed S. Hashim of the U.S. Naval War college and a consultant to General Abizaid's Central Command: “The insurgents may have calculated that their success does not now require an elaborate political and socioeconomic vision of a 'free' Iraq….Articulating the desire to be free of foreign occupation has sufficed to win popular support.”

But are so many Iraqis so unthinking or so unmindful of their country's history that they can brush aside questions about who will rule and how once the foreigners are gone? Is enough being done to challenge them on these matters? And is the wider world's grim fascination with the effects of terrorism and its allies on the rest of us empowering these groups within their own societies, and deflecting questions from their own people about where this ignorant conduct could possibly be leading?

After the Election: Needed A Bi-Partisan Alliance?

It may seem naive even to think of a bi-partisan alliance for anything after this corrosive political campaign. But Senators Joe Biden and John McCain are not waifs in Washington, and manage to make themselves felt in the political and legislative processes. Here's what they said Sunday in a discussion of Iraq and democracy in the Middle East on “Face the Nation”:

Sen. McCAIN: "On November the 3rd, we'd better call a truce and stop this and sit down together, no matter who wins...

Sen. BIDEN: "Absolutely.

Sen. McCAIN: "...and start talking about national unity and addressing these issues. I deplore this kind of bitterness and anger. Why can't we have a dialogue like Joe and I are just having on this program? We've got to stop this, and we'd better have some national unity. And we'd better reject those that continue this bitter partisanship because there's too many issues. The future--the enemy is al-Qaida. The enemy is al-Qaida, not Democrats or Republicans.

Sen. BIDEN: I agree."

One development that may get in the way of cooperation on a pro-democracy agenda in the Middle East is the impulse on the part of the left and right wings of the Democrats and the Republicans to scuttle it.

Here's an item we picked up recently: There's no question whom Richard Viguerie wants to see in the White House for the next four years. A founding father of the modern conservative movement, he is foursquare behind President Bush despite what he regards as undue influence from one wing of the GOP, the neoconservatives. In this, Viguerie reflects a hallowed Republican Party tradition: Mute policy differences and unite at election time.

But for Viguerie and other conservative leaders, maintaining that discipline this year is harder than usual. The Republicans' united front masks a growing struggle sparked by the president's hawkish and ambitious foreign policy--one that may burst into the open soon after the polls close, whoever wins. "Most conservatives are not comfortable with the neocons," Viguerie says. He decries the neocons as "overbearing" and "immensely influential. . . . They want to be the world's policeman. We don't feel our role is to be Don Quixote, righting all the wrongs in the world."

Viguerie's disquiet is widely shared by veteran conservative activists, who are increasingly blaming neoconservatives for placing Iraq at the center of the war on terrorism. "I'm hearing more discussion about foreign policy and the direction of the country than I have heard probably in the last 35 years," says Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

It is also quite conceivable that the Michael Moore – Noam Chomsky element among the Democrats will happily jump in on the side of the paleos and neo realists. Their contention will be that Kerry would have run away with the election and the Dems would have won in Congress if they had only stayed with the Dean attitude about the war.

At the moment, says our Guru Charles Cook, the Republicans are likely to hold both the Houses and Senate. The Clinton Years with a Republican Congress provide ample illustration of how troublesome it can be to manage a foreign policy that is under constant partisan fire form Capitol Hill. So if Kerry wins, someone has to think about bringing some Republicans along. If Bush wins, someone has to be thinking about getting some Democrats engaged so that Republicans who want to go back to the “more modest” and empty foreign policy don't pull the rug out from under everything that has been done so far.

NOtesonline

NOtesonline is a monthly electronic bulletin of news and information for the social democratic community. Penn Kemble is the volunteer editor of NOtesonline and is responsible for its contents and errors.

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