The Worldly Appeal of Jon Huntsman, Jr.

The announcement of Jon Huntsman, Jr. that he will resign his post as U.S. Ambassador to China should by no means be taken lightly. After all, if Huntsman does indeed throw his hat in the ring for the 2012 Republican nomination – as is widely expected – he will be the only candidate in the race with any formidable experience in foreign policy and national security, let alone enough to go toe-to-toe with President Obama in the general election. Any way that you look at it, Huntsman’s résumé stands out head and shoulders above all of his GOP rivals.

If Republican primary voters and caucus-goers were to pledge their delegates on the same basis of experience and competency that most job-seekers are evaluated, this contest should be a no-brainer. So far there are already six current and former Governors expected to declare their candidacies in the Republican race; Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels. So if Huntsman joins the pack then the 2012 debates could perhaps stand out to the delight of conservative policy wonks across the country as a great comparison of policies among seven different Republican administrations. Likely a number of these Republican Governors might cancel each other out fighting for the same constituencies (e.g. Huckabee and Barbour), and the candidate who can best demonstrate something unique about their breadth of experience and ability should set him or herself apart from the rest.

In a primary race so far dominated by Governors, foreign policy gravitas seems to be the one thing that every single candidate lacks – except of course Huntsman. This is a very big deal, especially for the Republicans which have branded themselves post-1945 as the party of the Cold War and the War on Terrorism. Historically, the GOP has been particularly inclined to nominate the candidate with the strongest claim to the national security establishment (e.g. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush) or decorated veterans of foreign wars who translated their personal heroics into Senate leadership on military and foreign policy (Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, John McCain). Even Gerald Ford served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater and served in the House and as Vice President as a dedicated internationalist. Reagan… well, at least he made war films for the USO…

For comparison, let’s take a look at Jon Huntsman, Jr.’s C.V.:

U.S. Ambassador to China
Governor of Utah
CEO, Huntsman Family Holdings Co.
Deputy U.S. Trade Representative
President, Huntsman Cancer Foundation
U.S. Ambassador to Singapore
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Asia
White House Staff Assistant

Education: B.A. University of Pennsylvania

Skills: Fluent in Mandarin Chinese

In 2008, such a career profile might have made Huntsman an ideal candidate for Ambassador to the United Nations or Secretary of State in the McCain administration that might have been… Though in 2012, this swarthy record of accomplishment makes him the unparalleled leader of the GOP presidential aspirants in terms of doing anything at all outside of the confines of their home state.

Even George W. Bush's stint in the Texas Air National Guard dwarfs the military experience that can be claimed by every last declared or likely candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012. Only Mitt Romney among them has had any experience having worked and lived overseas having spent 30 months as a Mormon missionary to France - and Huntsman can match that with his Mormon mission to Taiwan, let alone his Ambassadorships to the People's Repubic of China and Singapore.

Indeed, some of the secondi-tier candidates from Congress, i.e. Newt Gingrich, John Thune, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul have taken the occasional vote on matters of war and peace. However, they remain certainly lacking in the kind of stature enjoyed by the likes of Goldwater, Dole or McCain when they ran for president. Writing the occasional Op-Ed on foreign policy to the Washington Post, on the American Enterprise Institute blog or on your Twitter account - or rather, ghost-written in your name - does not constitute foreign policy experience. Thusfar, in addition to Huntsman only current Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has had any experience at all working in the executive branch – and let’s be honest, few except for professional politicos even know what the acronym OMB stands for let alone what Daniels did as its Director during the Bush administration.

Of course, lack of prior foreign policy experience does not preclude the possibility of a victorious presidential campaign or even a relatively-successful presidency on matters of foreign policy (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II); though it certainly helps in the effort to establish credibility in the minds of voters. Jon Huntsman, Jr.’s unique background as both a popular Governor as well as an accomplished diplomat and trade representative undoubtedly puts him at the top of my list for the GOP presidential nomination; if I were a Republican genuinely interested in demonstrating that my party is credible to lead America before the world, I would be doing everything I could to ensure a Jon Huntsman-Condoleeza Rice ticket in 2012.

To reinforce my point, let’s look at the highlights of the foreign policy backgrounds of the rest of the Republican presidential aspirants in 2012:

Mitt Romney – served as a Mormon missionary in France for 30 months, organized the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, wrote an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post lambasting the bipartisanly-supported New START Treaty.

Sarah Palin – Governor of a state that shares a border with Canada; can see Russia from her house. As the GOP candidate for Vice President in 2008 Palin called for U.S. military intervention in Georgia against Russia, did not know what the Bush Doctrine was, demonstrated complete and utter ignorance on the most rudimentary basics of foreign affairs.

Tim Pawlenty – Governor of another state that shares a border with Canada; in 2004 the President of Mexico met with Pawlenty to announce the opening of a Mexican consulate in St. Paul so that Mexican citizens would not have to travel all the way to Chicago to process passport and visa applications.

Mike Huckabee – None whatsoever, though caused a stir as a GOP candidate in 2008 when he published a blatantly ghost-written article in Foreign Affairs magazine accusing the Bush administration of having an “arrogant bunker mentality”.

Haley Barbour – None whatsoever.

Mitch Daniels – As the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Daniels served as the Bush administration’s point man to discredit then-Assistant to the President on Economic Policy Lawrence Lindsey estimate that Operation Iraqi Freedom would cost between $100 and $200 billion – Daniels toured the talk show circuit, stating that the war would in fact cost between $50 and $60 billion.

John Thune – Jonah Goldberg of Politico writes, “In many respects, Thune is the GOP version of John Kerry: a candidate with very presidential hair who seems 'electable' despite not having done much of anything." As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Thune’s record has consisted of little more notable than voting to support the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and lobbying against the closure of Ellsworth Air Force Base – once a significant economic engine in South Dakota.

Newt Gingrich – As Speaker of the House from 1995-1998, Gingrich stymied the Clinton administration’s foreign policy by opposing the Clinton administration’s military inventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan and Afghanistan, ran Congressional resistance to the Oslo peace process and blocked funding for the United Nations. In recent years, Newt’s grandest foray into foreign affairs has largely consisted of his railing against the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” – in one notable instance comparing the establishment of an Islamic cultural center to Nazis demonstrating next to the Holocaust Museum.

Rudy Giuliani – As Mayor of New York City Giulani responded to the initial 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center by establishing an emergency command center in its basement, later presided over the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United States, once expelled Yasser Arafat from a concert at Lincoln Center.

Rick Santorum – As a Senator from Pennsylvania Santorum voted for an end to the arms embargo and for the Clinton administration’s use of force in Bosnia, against the use of force in Kosovo, for the Bush administration’s use of force in Iraq and voted against a timetable for withdrawal. Santorum sponsored the Iran Freedom and Support Act which appropriated $10 million for regime change in Iran, and he was also one of only two Senators to vote against the confirmation of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.

Will Nan Hayworth Vote as a Rockefeller Republican or a Tea Party Extremist?

Now that the 112th Congress has been sworn in, New York’s 19th Congressional District is represented by Mount Kisco ophthalmologist and a freshman Republican Nan Hayworth. Rep. Hayworth’s voting record should be up for exacting scrutiny – perhaps even more so than the rest of the New York delegation on Capitol Hill – because her constituency in northern Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess and Orange counties has been one of the most fickle swing districts in the United States over the past few election cycles.

Belying New York’s solidly Democratic trends in recent statewide and presidential elections, the GOP has always found a receptive bastion in the New York City suburbs, exurbs and small towns Upstate. NY-19 spans all of those demographic zones. This swing district in the disproportionately upper-income exurbs and working class white towns has historically churned out from the moderate wing of the Republican Party who have demonstrated independence from the partisan leadership in Washington and supported liberal positions on civil rights and the environment. From 1969 through 1994 the 19th district was represented by Hamilton Fish IV – a leader of the liberal Rockefeller Republican wing who voted for two out of three Articles of Impeachment against President Nixon. In 1994 Fish was succeeded by the Katonah denizen Sue Kelly – who positioned herself squarely in the Republican Main Street Partnership, Republicans for Choice and Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Though the 19th Congressional District certainly trends red, it has proved to be not so solidly Republican that GOP Representatives elected here can get away with simply catering to the party’s base and ignoring swing voters. The decidedly independent exurbanites of the 19th District soured on Sue Kelly as she voted for the most divisive excesses of the Republican leadership; a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex marriage in all states, draconian spending cuts on Medicaid and student loans, and particularly as she doggedly supported what was increasingly perceived as a failing course in Iraq. Moreover, in a year when the House GOP leadership was tarnished by scandal, Representative Kelly came under fire as the Chair of the House Page Board which administered the program amidst the Mark Foley fiasco. In 2006 independent voters bolted.

New York’s 19th Congressional District has been represented so consistently by Republicans for so many decades that the DCCC rarely assembled more than token opposition. Though in 2006, the Republican incumbent was turned out of office by the dark horse Democratic candidate John Hall – a professional rock musician most famous for his guitar and vocals with the band Orleans. Unlike most other 2006 Democratic freshmen, John Hall ran on an unabashedly progressive platform of clean energy, environmental protection, expanding health care coverage and ending the war in Iraq – according to the strategems of the Clintonite New Democrats, he should have lost. But Hall managed to eke out a surprise 51% to 49% victory because he put together the most serious, well-funded Democratic campaign this district had seen in years. John Hall also benefited from a nationwide Democratic wave which proved devastating for most Northeastern Republicans, nowhere more than this quintessential blue state where in 2006 the ballots were headed by the enormously popular Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer. In 2008, an even stronger blue election cycle when Democratic candidates nationwide rode on the long coattails of Barack Obama, Hall won re-election with 59% of the vote.

Though the Democratic candidates performed exceptionally well in 2006 and 2008, even their gains in the Northeast turned out not to be the “national realignment” that some politicos took them for. In the 2010 round of midterm elections, the four-year tenure of John Hall was cut short by GOP challenger Nan Hayworth. Compared to 2006, in 2010 both the DCCC and RCCC regarded NY-19 as a competitive race from the get-go; the latter named Hayworth as one of their “Young Guns”. Even in a in a year when unemployment hovered above 9% and discontented voters were eager to oust incumbents, a red tsunami of a midterm cycle which decimated the ranks of 63 Democratic House members including 5 more from the New York City suburbs and Upstate, Nan Hayworth only won with a modest 52.7% of the vote over Hall’s 47.3%. In other words, even in this election cycle when Republican challengers nationwide had every external factor going in their favor, this was still a very close election. If there is any lesson to be taken home, it is that both parties should now consider NY-19 less like the bastion of moderate Northeastern Republicanism it once was and more like the model swing district that it now is.

Given the competitive nature of the 19th District and the historically persuasion of Hamilton Fish , Sue Kelly and the kind of Republicans which this constituency normally supports, one might expect our new Congresswoman Nan Hayworth to vote well within the moderate faction of the GOP. However, all signs thusfar portend that Hayworth – who enthusiastically received the endorsement of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, the National Rifle Association and the Tri-State Sons of Liberty – hails not from the Northeastern moderates once known as “Rockefeller Republicans” but as a firebrand from the right wing of the Republican Party. A proponent of Big Tent-ism she is not; Putnam County activist Jay Michaelson labels the election of Hayworth as “The End of Rockefeller Republicanism”; Bush speechwriter David Frum has described the Princeton- and Cornell-educated Hayworth as “New York's Ivy League Tea Partier”.

Nan Hayworth might not exude the cultural pseudo-populism of her fellow class of 2010 Republican freshmen; unlike the heartland districts where the GOP made most of its electoral gains in 2010, it is not very socially acceptable to espouse openly xenophobic positions in Hayworth’s native Mount Kisco – a multiethnic community with large Black, Latino and Jewish populations. Though what makes Hayworth so appealing to the Tea Party groups which backed her campaign is her dogmatic free market ideology. In his post-election piece in the New York Times, Peter Applebome explains the formation of Hayworth’s views on economics:

To hear her tell it, her life changed in high school, when, at her father’s urging, she read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, a popular explication of laissez-faire economics, whose listing on Amazon.com features endorsements by Ayn Rand and Ron Paul.

Often Ms. Hayworth sounds as if she is quoting from it: “Private enterprise must thrive. It must flourish. And it must do so without the federal government putting a finger on the scale.”

As for the abuses of business, her attitude seems mostly to blame the government (the mortgage market, for example, was warped by government interference) or to figure that stuff happens.

The best way to predict how Hayworth might vote over the course of the next two years might be to analyze who contributed to her campaign; in her own words in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, “Funding finds its way to a cause”. And not surprisingly, the bulk of the funding for Nan Hayworth’s campaign came from banks, insurance companies, HMOs and the local health care industry which have plenty of chits to cash in from their clientele in Congress (compared to Sue Kelly –who fundraised from a greater variety of business interests – it is interesting to note that Hayworth’s campaign contributions came so disproportionately from the financial and health care sectors). Already Hayworth has voted to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – the number one item on the health care industry’s agenda. Over the next few months she can be expected to vote to dismantle the Dodd-Frank legislation on financial regulations, to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the highest tax brackets, to abolish the Estate Tax, and other measures meant to protect the profits of her financial patrons.

In addition to the boilerplate economic issues that all Republican candidates campaigned upon in 2010, it will be telling to watch how Congresswoman Hayworth is going to vote on any proposed changes to our national gun control and mental health laws in response to the Tucson shootings. So far, it seems that the most pivotal legislation will be that introduced by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D NY-4) that would ban high-capacity magazines like the 33-round clip used in Arizona. According to The Poughkeepsie Journal, the 19th District’s new U.S. Representative is opposed to even the most modest measures of reforming national gun laws.

Freshman Republican Rep. Nan Hayworth of Mount Kisco, Westchester County, said that even if McCarthy's proposal became law, it would be circumvented. "There would be an extensive secondary market," she said. "So these clips would still be available."

Amazingly enough, Hayworth contends that she will respond to this deadly commerce in extended ammo clips with no legitimate civilian use by voting for the United States government to sit on their hands, parroting the press releases of the National Rifle Association - her campaign’s 9th-largest contributor. Even on the matter of mental health policy – which national Republicans are now hoisting as a cudgel with which to address the Tucson massacre and sidestep gun control altogether – Hayworth promulgates the archaic doctrine of federal impotency.

"The relevant law has been established," she said. "It is incumbent on the state of Arizona to determine how better to enforce it. I don't feel this is a matter for the Congress to pursue at this time."

If Nan Hayworth’s response to the first national crisis of the 112th Congress is going to be emblematic of her voting record for the remainder of her term, it might portend that she will vote to maintain the deregulation of business and public sector minimalism to the most absurd limits of Henry Hazlitt’s laissez faire ideology.

From the narrow standpoint of politics, Hayworth’s posturing on the Second Amendment may or may not translate into electoral dividends come November 2012. Granted, New York’s 19th Congressional District includes the small towns of Putnam, Dutchess and Orange County where the endorsement of the NRA carries a lot of weight amongst the large gun-owning electorate. But they also include Rockland and Westchester County which are home to more suburbanites who sit on the other end of the cultural divide and are more likely to hold a politician’s reflexive obedience to the NRA as a fault against them. Even in 2010 Hall won these counties – including Hayworth’s native Mount Kisco. If common sense gun control legislation like Rep. McCarthy’s high-capacity magazine bill is brought to a vote and Hayworth obediently tows the line of her campaign financiers, then suburban independents might very well jump ship come 2012.

The 19th District is certainly more conservative than New York State as a whole, but that doesn’t mean that Republican office-holders here can speak and act like Republicans from Texas or Alabama and coast to re-election (there is a reason Hayworth’s campaign literature almost ignored social issues altogether and focused incessantly on health care and taxes). So the working class whites of Brewster and Carmel are upset by the influx of Mexican immigrants and the swift cultural transitions happening in their communities – but if Nan Hayworth votes for any Arizona-style immigration laws then the rapidly-growing Hispanic electorate in these counties is going to vote en masse for her opponent in 2012. If John Boehner schedules a vote on a bill meant to scuttle the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or if he resurrects the Federal Marriage Amendment as an election year wedge and Hayworth votes reflexively with her party, the Journal News and the Poughkeepsie Journal will almost certainly cast Hayworth as a bigot – and rightly so. New York is simply too cosmopolitan an environment to be conducive to the Kulturkampf which passes for politics elsewhere in the heartland.

Nan Hayworth’s Tea Party posturing might have been largely ignored in an outlier election cycle all-but-defined by a sluggish economy, rampant unemployment and a climate preternaturally hostile to incumbents, but she should be wary of voting as though there were no tomorrow when the Democratic Party is going to put up a spirited opposition in every future election in this swing district. In November 2012 when New York is expected to vote heavily for Obama and Gillibrand’s re-election and straight-line voting should help all Democratic candidates lower on the ballot without any countervailing Republican wind, NY-19 is surely going to serve as a prime pickup opportunity for the DCCC. So if Nan Hayworth wants to serve another term in Congress after this one, she should emulate the example set by moderate Northeastern Republican Senators Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown and consider breaking with her party to vote for the occasional Democratic-sponsored bill every now and then. If Hayworth does not demonstrate independence from the national Republican Party, and especially if she votes consistently with the Tea Party Caucus, then she is only going to hand this seat to her Democratic challenger in 2012.

A Conversation with the Egg Sandwichtigi

Madu: Hey there Bakary, could I have a fried egg sandwich with three eggs and onions?

Bakary: No problem! By the way, Madu, I’ve got a question.

M: Shoot.

Bakary: When are you going back to America?

M: If all goes well I’ll be here until September 2010.

B: And then are you going back to America?

M: Eventually. But first, I think I’ll travel around Africa for a few months... I want to go to Ghana, Benin, Senegal, maybe even Tunisia, Libya or Egypt... Then I'll go back to America.

B: Ok, well when you do go to America, we will go together, right?

M: Bakary, you know that I can’t get you a visa – so don’t even bother asking.

B: Eh!!! Madu, don’t be so mean!!! Here in Mali we are poor and there are no jobs, but in America there is money and I can work and find so much money!!!

M: I’m not being mean, Bakary, I’m being honest. If I were to tell you that you can go to America and that you can find work there, I’d be lying.

B: But you live in America! Surely you help me find a job!

M: No I can’t!!! No one in America can find jobs!!! When I go back to America, even I probably won’t be able to find a job!!! Besides, you can’t even speak the language, and if you can’t speak with your boss how is he going to hire you?

B: Oh, but I do speak the language! I can speak Tubabukan! (“Tubabukan”, which in Bambara literally translates into “White People Language”, refers to the language of their former colonial overlords: French)

M: If you think that you can get a job in America speaking “Tubabukan”, then you definitely can’t. Personne ne parle pas le français aux États-Unis, tout le monde ne parle que l’anglais!

B: You speak Tubabukan!

M: I also speak Bambara, Minianka and Arabic, and those won't get you very far in the American job market either.

B: Well... I will work for you!

M: What are you talking about? I just told you that I’m going to be unemployed, I'll probably be living in my parents’ basement. I can’t hire you to sit around and play Uno with me.

B: What about your parents? For room and board, I will work in your fathers’ fields!

M: My father is a psychiatrist specializing in children and adolescents. He’s not a farmer. He doesn’t have any fields.

B: Oh, but there is so much money in America! You are all so rich! Surely there has to be some work there for me to do!

M: How do I explain this without offending you?... There are 30 million Americans who are looking for work and can’t find it. And that’s not counting the people who have some work but not enough so they’re looking for more work, that’s not counting the people who have work but it’s bad work and they can’t find any work that pays a decent wage, and that’s not counting the people who have given up looking for work altogether!!! Even if you somehow did get a visa to come to America and even if there were any jobs, there would be at least 50 million Americans already waiting in line - almost every single one of them has a high school diploma, maybe half of them have a university degree, and every single one of them speaks more English than you do because they know that no one in America speaks French – which until a minute ago, you didn’t. Unless you have some idea to create your own business¸ a completely new idea that no one in America has had before, there’s no way in Hell you’re ever going to find a job in America.

B: I could sell fried egg sandwiches! Everyone loves fried egg sandwiches!

(Long Awkward Pause)

M: Come to think of it, I could probably find you a job writing economic stimulus policy for a Republican think tank…

B: Really? What do I have to do to get this job?

M: Oh… nevermind…

The Progressive Case for John McCain

(circa September 2007, when it looked like the GOP was going to nominate either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani and the thought of John McCain sitting in the Oval Office was relatively less conducive to me shitting my pants)

If you have spent more than 30 seconds in my presence, you probably know that I am 1) obsessed with politics, and 2) very, very liberal. This is my third semester as President of the Amherst College Democrats, and I spent last summer working for my Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. And I believe that John McCain has the potential to make an excellent President.

My initial response to the man is quite inexplicable. At the utterance of his name, I feel like Frank Sinatra’s character in The Manchurian Candidate, as though I have been brainwashed into believing that “John McCain is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” After reading his memoirs about serving as a Navy pilot in Vietnam and spending five years as a prisoner of war, I too am impressed by this man’s acts of courage.

But when it comes to candidates, it is policy and not personality that truly matters. And John McCain is a very conservative Republican. He was first elected as Arizona’s Senator by promising to continue the legacy of his predecessor: Barry Goldwater, the very founder of the modern conservative movement. However, this school of thought is very different from the Christian fundamentalism and crony capitalism which defines the current administration. McCain’s mode of conservatism is predicated on the rule of law, economic prudence, and competent management of the American Empire.

A John McCain presidency should not frighten liberals, for assuming that the makeup of Congress does not change, whoever sits in the Oval Office in 2009 will see bills on their desk written by Democratic committee chairs. If there were to be a government divided with a very progressive Congress and an open-minded Republican President, we can expect a flurry of enormous legislative accomplishments.

The best example is what McCain would do in regards to global warming. He has coauthored legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and if given the opportunity, would use the most powerful office in the world to take on this daunting endeavor. Only the rare individual like John McCain could establish the notion that preserving the polar ice caps is an inherently conservative end and vital for our national security. With the clock ticking towards the point of no return, it might thus be in the global interest for McCain to be our next President.

In the realm of economics, an analogy can be made that John McCain is to George W. Bush as Theodore Roosevelt was to William McKinley. Whereas Bush has ascribed to any policy desired by his campaign financiers, McCain has campaigned to end corporate welfare as we know it. He voted against subsidies to the oil companies and to the pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, McCain’s conception of free markets includes the correction of market failures, having advocated stricter regulation of the auto industry, the accounting industry, the tobacco industry, even the campaign finance industry. Indeed, he is a small-government Republican, but a McCain administration could very well revive the long-dormant spirit of Progressive Republicanism.

John McCain is a social conservative, but he adheres to the authority of binding precedent more than the fatwas of the Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Particularly after the South Carolina primary in 2000, in which the Bush campaign made an issue out of the color of his daughter’s skin, McCain is openly hostile to the culture warriors of his party whom he has labeled as “agents of intolerance.” McCain is pro-life, but supports federally-financed stem cell research. He opposes same-sex marriage, but he also opposes banning it with a constitutional amendment, which he described “as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” On illegal immigration, he is one of the primary champions of allowing illegal aliens to become full citizens. Altogether, his positions are sufficiently to the right in order to pass his party’s ideological litmus test, and in some instances he is quite liberal.

Any liberal optimism for John McCain is tempered, however, by his stance on the single most important question which faces the American nation today: the war in Iraq. He does not march in lockstep with the Bush administration, having distanced himself from its treatment of detainees, but McCain is nevertheless accused to be a facilitator of the larger, failing mission. This accusation is well founded, for he still argues that the war can be won with sufficient reinforcements; the so-called McCain Doctrine of escalation.

It seems strange that the former straight-talker would take this occasion to deny perceptible reality, but the about-face signals the dilemma which all Republicans face in 2008. The next presidential election is sure to be all but defined by the war in Iraq, and this enormously unpopular undertaking has lost the backing of all but the most dogmatic members of the Grand Old Party. Anyone who wants to receive the party’s nomination must win over the increasingly-dwindling voters who wish to stay the course, and so every single Republican candidate, McCain included, now has to kowtow to what is but a peripheral element of the general electorate.

My prediction is that once the primaries have been decided, John McCain is going to reestablish himself as the straight-talking centrist reformer who we saw in 2000. If Candidate McCain chooses a likeminded moderate like Rudy Giuliani as his running-mate, the result will be a Republican administration which could implement an agenda with broad-based popular support. And just as only Nixon could go to China, perhaps John McCain can then extricate the United States from Iraq.

There is more at stake in the next election than party and personality, and even this loyal Democrat has respect for the virtues of conservatism. As a young idealist considering a career in public service, in fact, I would be proud to work under the leadership of a President McCain.

Overreach and Internal Discord: The Future of the G.O.P.

(November 2004)

In the eyes of the Republican Party, the American electorate has given them an unqualified mandate to lead the country on a sharp rightward turn. After all, they emerged from what was deemed the most important election in years with a wider lead in both houses of Congress, a slight majority of statehouses, and a president who even won the popular vote. In the words of the first commander-in-chief with an M.B.A., “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it”.

What that means is, from now until Bush’s last days as a lame-duck president, do not expect any policy changes lacking the right wing’s blessing – take House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s derailing of the 9/11 Commission’s intelligence reforms as Exhibit A. Since the 2004 election validated Karl Rove’s tend-the-base strategy, the captains of industry and evangelical groups expect payback for all their work towards their candidate’s re-election. And they are expecting more than just leftover scraps from the 2000 platform.

“Now comes the revolution”, blogger Richard Viguerie declares, “If you don’t implement a conservative agenda now, when do you?” And by conservative agenda, he and his comrades are not just talking about plugging a hole in progressives’ ambitions for the 21st century. Leaders in the GOP are talking about rolling back the progressive edifices of the 20th century. Income taxes – flattened. Social Security – privatized. In his victory speech, President Bush outlined his very own “vision thing”: an “Ownership Society” in which law-of-the-jungle free market economics is used to solve just about every problem ranging from health care to public education.

My impression is that the Republican Party is lapsing into a state of intoxication, and their drugs of choice are pride and ideology. According to exit polls, the reasons voters offered for giving President Bush another term were that they admired his overt religiosity, traditional values, and dogged rhetoric about fighting terrorism. When it comes to bread-and-butter economic issues, the Republican leadership simply does not have a mandate to carry out the sweeping changes that they promise; in fact, the positions voters preferred on taxes, health care, and Social Security belonged to John Kerry. Just as how Mr. Bush refused to answer reporters’ follow-up questions by invoking “the will of the people” during his post-victory press conference, the GOP is grotesquely misinterpreting whatever mandate to lead that it has earned. It is as though the people have given the Republicans their car keys in order to drive them home safely, but our designated drivers are taking it as an OK to drive to their favorite bar across town. And if those at the wheel are actually going to party as hard as they say they will, at the end of this ride we are going to find ourselves in a ditch.

Unsurprisingly, this agenda is not so palatable among the rank and file. Though the party marched in lockstep through the last election cycle, the Republican-on-Republican literary combat has already begun with Pat Buchanan’s latest book, Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency. The charge is that there is an ever-widening gulf between the party’s nascent big government, interventionist wing and the true inheritors of the conservative philosophy. True fiscal conservatives like Senator John McCain loathe the status quo of deficit spending, exploding national debt, and public policy tailored to special corporate interests. True legal conservatives like Senator Arlen Specter do not want domineering judges who remake the law in line with their own political whims. True rugged individualists, like the Cato Institute and the Alaska state legislature, are horrified by the Justice Department’s wanton disregard for civil liberties. But Republican politicians who dare to stray from the official line, such as Senator Specter, are tagged “RINO”s (Republican In Name Only) threatened with having their party’s nomination and committee chairmanships pulled out from under them.

Let us not overlook the overlook the ten-thousand-pound pink elephant which is spawning friction among the caucus: Iraq. If there has ever been an example of neo-conservative overreach, this it, for American troops are dying not to eliminate an explicit threat to national security, but to promote democracy in Fallujah. Republican Congressmen like Doug Bereuter of Nebraska and Ron Paul of Texas are joining the steady drip of dependable party men who can no longer support the war, and rightly so, for it clashes with the principles for which they have dedicated their entire careers.

So what can we anticipate from the Republican Party over the next four years? Barring a Democratic upheaval in the midterm elections, they should be able to achieve pretty much everything they want with ease, but this could very well be more of a curse than a blessing. As Tom DeLay wanted to have the Contract with America broken so that he could remain House Majority Leader while under indictment for criminal charges, his colleagues effortlessly exercised their wherewithal to see it done. That this is what the GOP is spending its “political capital” on, however, cannot possibly benefit the party’s standing in the long run, and conscientious Republicans who abide by their core values of prudence, restraint and personal responsibility are furious. By the time the next presidential primary season rolls around, expect the disciples of Edmund Burke to revolt against the charlatans who have sullied their proud tradition. And if their infighting gets ugly enough, it might just rip apart the Republican coalition.