Clinton is strong on paper, but I think we know her too well to see the aura that a good CV can impart to a candidate, so she looks weak. We know her political machine, its tactics (not least of which is the "hang back until you have to say something, then say as little as possible and spin your reticence as 'listening'" tactic that we're seeing now), her past, her wealth, her missteps -- substantive or concocted by her enemies -- and so on, and we're weary of it all. To me it seems like she's her own biggest weakness in a clumsy way that obscures her ideas and appeal, especially with Sanders calling out the pitfalls of 20+ years of neo-liberal interventionism in foreign policy and the closeness of her wing of the party to Wall Street and multinational trade deals. IMO, she'll have to do more than chase him to the left to convince dems/progressives that she understands the left has changed since the rise of the Clintons. She may have to convincingly renounce the very brand of Democratic politics that put her where she is today - if that's possible - to show us under-40 folks (especially millennials) that she hears more voices than the baby-boomers, yellow dog dems, and CEOs that have been her core supporters for so long.
I would agree mostly. However I cannot get over her use of a home email server to circumvent transparency laws.
Its not even the action, its that through her attempts to defend the decision it showed me a clear and conscious effort to avoid the very oversight that her and her boss campaigned on embracing. Given the already pretty bad transparency precedent the last two presidents have set, I cant, in good conscious, vote for someone that seems to make obvious decisions that fly in the face of the basic principles of our government. It would be like keeping the old guard around, only under the guise of a new guard. We need to get away from the Nixon type politics and policies that have plagued this country since he was in office.
We need to get away from the Nixon type politics and policies that have plagued this country since he was in office.
Though I think it's a tad more complex than that, I couldn't agree more. I was trying to be circumspect and constructive in my first comment, but I will not be voting for her either. For me, it's her deep ties to the unholy liberal-interventionist/neoconservative consensus on foreign policy that gave us the Iraq war, the clumsy Libya intervention, and many other recent (last 25 years or so) attempts to create new FP realities that ignore simple facts on the ground and fail to consider the nation's best interests in the long term.
IMO, good foreign policy requires realism, restraint, and a long view - not politicized saber-rattling and grand dreams of creating allies through military action in their backyards. The fact that Hillary's FP record aligns pretty well with McCain's (he, the poster senator for the problem I see) takes her off my list of people I can vote for. Enough with the demagogues, hawks, IMF shills, and nation/region (re)builders; let's bring in the FP grownups - the realists. /rant
Definitely agree with that as well. Though I don't know of a candidate I have seen that will be able to really enforce or change that, even if they say it during election seasons.
We have a lot of old guard that still remember WWII and still think we are in cold war times. Its going to take a couple more generations to change that (realisitically the Baby Boomers still run the show, and the people of the 70's and 80's are just starting to see true representation). I think it will change over time and get away from that method of thinking.
On the other hand, there is some logic in realpolitik ideology. As good as we want to be, we still have to deal with the assholes of the worlds and keep them from becoming another Hitler, and at the same times keep ourselves from becoming another Rome.
I agree. The Cold War looms large in the psychology and philosophy of too many influential foreign policy makers, and also in the structure of our military, Congress, electorate, and economy. It's a tough nut to crack, but I often think that the only possible outcome of things as they are is this perpetual war thing we have going now. In other words, I think current prevailing ideas are bankrupt as 21st century strategies for addressing the security dilemma, and they now persist mostly to enrich the non-state beneficiaries of conflict, not because they make us more secure in the long term. That can't last forever; its weaknesses are already being exposed.
It also occurs to me now that I could have been more specific in my invocation of the term "realism." As you may know there is, and has been for a while, a school of realism - most accessibly described in the (sometimes conflicting) works of John Mearsheimer, Sean Kay, and Stephen Walt - that is sometimes called neorealism or structural realism. Their ideas, which I won't try to summarize here, do get some exposure because Mearsheimer and Walt are regulars on the talking head TV circuit (most often on PBS), but they don't find many friends in D.C. They don't always get it right (though they famously nailed the outcome of intervention in Iraq), but I do think that neorealism has taken the end of the Cold War in stride and offers some useful analyses of current and potential conflicts.
Anyway, I wasn't recommending a neo-realists's coup in the State Department, etc., or anything like that. Just a strong presence, backed by key figures like POTUS, that can counterbalance or call BS on the crusading, hyper-political mentality that has dominated post-Cold War American FP. Sometimes intervention is the right thing to do - but we need more people who can put the brakes on jingoism and crusading for domestic political gain, and Hillary hasn't really shown a willingness to do so in meaningful ways, even when given the perfect chance as SecState. It will take a while to make such a big structural change, as you point out, but IMO it has to be done.
Definitely agree. I see Mearsheimer and Walt somewhat regularly as the PBS newshour is really the only national news show I watch anymore (its not my only source, just my only mainstream TV media source).
It would take a lot, and a shakedown of unelected officials in State and other branches would cause some turmoil politically for someone with such power like the POTUS. Which is why I was hoping to see a lame duck Obama start the domino train to that direction.
I think part of some of the old guards fears come in the realization that our standing armies were pretty fat and inexperienced/unprepared in terms of combat experience in the 80's and it showed in a few conflicts of the 90's (ie: Serbia, Kuwait etc) even though it was never tested due to our sheer power and size, especially on the technology front. However this period also showed that our training and lessons learned from previous conflicts allowed our military to get up to speed VERY quickly and the lack of experience was overcome rather easily.
But it still seems that the some of the current justification of our "need" for perpetual warefare of our current standing military is continued experience, which seems somewhat of a progression of the old "domino theory" that was projected to the masses post WWII with Korea and Vietnam.
We seem to be in need of another FDR, someone willing to try different approaches, go nuts with a Veto power and show he isn't willing to pander even when not a lame duck. And I simply keep hoping someone emerges from the crowd to do just that.
Well said. I would only add that I feel the 500 lb gorilla here is our old enemy the military-industrial complex, particularly its power over Congress and the Pentagon. I have no prescription for fixing that problem, but I agree it will take the kind of leadership, force of will, empathy, and political skills not seen since FDR.
Clinton is strong on paper, but I think we know her too well to see the aura that a good CV can impart to a candidate, so she looks weak. We know her political machine, its tactics (not least of which is the "hang back until you have to say something, then say as little as possible and spin your reticence as 'listening'" tactic that we're seeing now), her past, her wealth, her missteps -- substantive or concocted by her enemies -- and so on, and we're weary of it all. To me it seems like she's her own biggest weakness in a clumsy way that obscures her ideas and appeal, especially with Sanders calling out the pitfalls of 20+ years of neo-liberal interventionism in foreign policy and the closeness of her wing of the party to Wall Street and multinational trade deals. IMO, she'll have to do more than chase him to the left to convince dems/progressives that she understands the left has changed since the rise of the Clintons. She may have to convincingly renounce the very brand of Democratic politics that put her where she is today - if that's possible - to show us under-40 folks (especially millennials) that she hears more voices than the baby-boomers, yellow dog dems, and CEOs that have been her core supporters for so long.
I would agree mostly. However I cannot get over her use of a home email server to circumvent transparency laws.
Its not even the action, its that through her attempts to defend the decision it showed me a clear and conscious effort to avoid the very oversight that her and her boss campaigned on embracing. Given the already pretty bad transparency precedent the last two presidents have set, I cant, in good conscious, vote for someone that seems to make obvious decisions that fly in the face of the basic principles of our government. It would be like keeping the old guard around, only under the guise of a new guard. We need to get away from the Nixon type politics and policies that have plagued this country since he was in office.
Though I think it's a tad more complex than that, I couldn't agree more. I was trying to be circumspect and constructive in my first comment, but I will not be voting for her either. For me, it's her deep ties to the unholy liberal-interventionist/neoconservative consensus on foreign policy that gave us the Iraq war, the clumsy Libya intervention, and many other recent (last 25 years or so) attempts to create new FP realities that ignore simple facts on the ground and fail to consider the nation's best interests in the long term.
IMO, good foreign policy requires realism, restraint, and a long view - not politicized saber-rattling and grand dreams of creating allies through military action in their backyards. The fact that Hillary's FP record aligns pretty well with McCain's (he, the poster senator for the problem I see) takes her off my list of people I can vote for. Enough with the demagogues, hawks, IMF shills, and nation/region (re)builders; let's bring in the FP grownups - the realists. /rant
Definitely agree with that as well. Though I don't know of a candidate I have seen that will be able to really enforce or change that, even if they say it during election seasons.
We have a lot of old guard that still remember WWII and still think we are in cold war times. Its going to take a couple more generations to change that (realisitically the Baby Boomers still run the show, and the people of the 70's and 80's are just starting to see true representation). I think it will change over time and get away from that method of thinking.
On the other hand, there is some logic in realpolitik ideology. As good as we want to be, we still have to deal with the assholes of the worlds and keep them from becoming another Hitler, and at the same times keep ourselves from becoming another Rome.
I agree. The Cold War looms large in the psychology and philosophy of too many influential foreign policy makers, and also in the structure of our military, Congress, electorate, and economy. It's a tough nut to crack, but I often think that the only possible outcome of things as they are is this perpetual war thing we have going now. In other words, I think current prevailing ideas are bankrupt as 21st century strategies for addressing the security dilemma, and they now persist mostly to enrich the non-state beneficiaries of conflict, not because they make us more secure in the long term. That can't last forever; its weaknesses are already being exposed.
It also occurs to me now that I could have been more specific in my invocation of the term "realism." As you may know there is, and has been for a while, a school of realism - most accessibly described in the (sometimes conflicting) works of John Mearsheimer, Sean Kay, and Stephen Walt - that is sometimes called neorealism or structural realism. Their ideas, which I won't try to summarize here, do get some exposure because Mearsheimer and Walt are regulars on the talking head TV circuit (most often on PBS), but they don't find many friends in D.C. They don't always get it right (though they famously nailed the outcome of intervention in Iraq), but I do think that neorealism has taken the end of the Cold War in stride and offers some useful analyses of current and potential conflicts.
Anyway, I wasn't recommending a neo-realists's coup in the State Department, etc., or anything like that. Just a strong presence, backed by key figures like POTUS, that can counterbalance or call BS on the crusading, hyper-political mentality that has dominated post-Cold War American FP. Sometimes intervention is the right thing to do - but we need more people who can put the brakes on jingoism and crusading for domestic political gain, and Hillary hasn't really shown a willingness to do so in meaningful ways, even when given the perfect chance as SecState. It will take a while to make such a big structural change, as you point out, but IMO it has to be done.
Definitely agree. I see Mearsheimer and Walt somewhat regularly as the PBS newshour is really the only national news show I watch anymore (its not my only source, just my only mainstream TV media source).
It would take a lot, and a shakedown of unelected officials in State and other branches would cause some turmoil politically for someone with such power like the POTUS. Which is why I was hoping to see a lame duck Obama start the domino train to that direction.
I think part of some of the old guards fears come in the realization that our standing armies were pretty fat and inexperienced/unprepared in terms of combat experience in the 80's and it showed in a few conflicts of the 90's (ie: Serbia, Kuwait etc) even though it was never tested due to our sheer power and size, especially on the technology front. However this period also showed that our training and lessons learned from previous conflicts allowed our military to get up to speed VERY quickly and the lack of experience was overcome rather easily.
But it still seems that the some of the current justification of our "need" for perpetual warefare of our current standing military is continued experience, which seems somewhat of a progression of the old "domino theory" that was projected to the masses post WWII with Korea and Vietnam.
We seem to be in need of another FDR, someone willing to try different approaches, go nuts with a Veto power and show he isn't willing to pander even when not a lame duck. And I simply keep hoping someone emerges from the crowd to do just that.
Well said. I would only add that I feel the 500 lb gorilla here is our old enemy the military-industrial complex, particularly its power over Congress and the Pentagon. I have no prescription for fixing that problem, but I agree it will take the kind of leadership, force of will, empathy, and political skills not seen since FDR.