The new argument against Obama from some on the right is that he is supposedly interested in cutting “defense spending.”  The non-interventionist would respond that we spend very little on actual defense, but I suspect the joke would be lost on anyone who thinks that Obama wants to slash the Pentagon’s budget.  Here is Obama’s view of what the military budget should be in the future:

We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. Bolstering these forces is about more than meeting quotas. We must recruit the very best and invest in their capacity to succeed. That means providing our servicemen and servicewomen with first-rate equipment, armor, incentives, and training — including in foreign languages and other critical skills. Each major defense program should be reevaluated in light of current needs, gaps in the field, and likely future threat scenarios. Our military will have to rebuild some capabilities and transform others. At the same time, we need to commit sufficient funding to enable the National Guard to regain a state of readiness.

This would necessarily involve large increases above current spending levels.  His campaign website restates all of these points almost verbatim. 

I take Klein’s point that Obama’s record is thin and it is difficult to know for certain whether Obama would follow through on these proposals, but very clearly his stated, official position is to expand military spending and domestic spending significantly.  If you think that federal spending on both is excessive, as I do, this is a demonstrably worse position than any other candidate’s, and I suspect many Obama voters would agree that expanding the size of the military is not a top priority for them.  Obama presumably doesn’t think there needs to be a trade-off between exploding the budget with new domestic initiatives and doing the same with new military funding, since he intends on raising the rates of several different taxes and levying a new one every now and then. 

As Obama has been moving into the general election, he has not needed to move towards the “center” on foreign policy because he was largely already there last year.  Remarkably, for someone who claims that he will challenge the “mindset” that led to the war in Iraq and wants to “turn the page” on the practices of the administration, Obama offers quite a lot of continuity with this administration.  Why his critics would want to emphasise the possibility of his stark differences with Mr. Bush, when this will only make him more popular, is truly beyond me.  Once revealed as offering little in the way of the “change” that he preaches in the area of policy that has most damaged the administration’s reputation, Obama’s appeal ought to collapse like a house of cards.          

P.S.  I do have to agree with Klein, however, that his dodging of the questions about Jim Johnson’s dodgy loans is pathetic.  Whatever one thinks about the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis, having those who are possibly ethically challenged be the ones responsible for vetting the list of possible VP selections is not really consistent with the high-minded, open and transparent government-reform shtick.  Updated: Johnson, who doesn’t “work” for Obama, just resigned from the VP selection process.  What was an irrelevant “game” yesterday has become a serious problem today that warrants his departure.

Filed under: foreign policy, military, politics