Sunday, September 02, 2012
Post-RNC: One Huge Oversight
I was going to say something in retrospect, but Dignified Rant beat me to it. I absolutely do think that the Romney campaign should run on the economy as its main argument, but we can't forget that we do have military engagements in progress. What bothers me even more, though, is a nagging feeling that Romney hasn't formulated - or perhaps fully expressed if he has formulated - his position. UPDATE: Still, the upshot is that the more I learn about Romney the person, the more I'm warming to him (a good speech certainly didn't hurt). The reverse is proving true about Obama, though.
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3 comments:
Well, who are Romney's foreign policy advisors?
The hard part about running against Obama's foreign policy is that, in its major inflection points, Obama's foreign policy has continued or expanded on the major inflection points of Bush's foreign policy. Bush's foreign policy was liberal, which is why so many on the right - realist conservatives - opposed it. (A major reason Bush's post-9/11 record has been beaten so badly is it's attacked from the right and left.)
Obama dishonestly ran against Bush's foreign policy when his choice of foreign policy advisors (eg, Samantha Powers) indicated he would continue Bush's foreign policy, but that strategy profited him on the left. What would Romney gain on the right with an oppositional foreign policy platform?
On the other hand, if Romney wins and honestly pursues smaller government in libertarian fashion, he will need to review American foreign policy and the costs of its organs (eg, military, homeland security) as part of that cost-cutting initiative. There is our big expensive interventionist government at home, but there's also our big expensive interventionist government projected overseas. We pay for both. Cutting back on American presence overseas implies we leave it to other ambitious powers to establish order in the places from which we recede, whether China, Russia, or regional strongmen.
If you're willing, Minerva, I'd like your opinion of these two related posts on my blog:
A problem of definition in the Iraq controversy: Was the issue Saddam's regime or Iraq's demonstrable WMD?, Regime Change in Iraq from Clinton to Bush.
Follow-up: A question for Romney and Obama about liberalism in American foreign policy
Thanks, Eric! I shall take a look.
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