Caring About Readiness Is Absurd
Posted on October 3rd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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This is getting pretty absurd. Would Conor somehow feel safe if Barack Obama were president under those circumstances? What if the Silver Surfer came to Earth and said Galactus was going to consume the planet? Who would make him feel safe then? ~Philip Klein
Klein is responding to Conor’s post-debate post in which he imagines a scenario that would put a President Palin to the test:
To put a finer point on this, I ask the following of everyone who watched tonight’s debate — were John McCain assassinated at his inauguration by terrorists, even as two American cities saw buildings partially blown up by truck bombs, and Vladimir Putin used the opportunity to move troops into a former Soviet Repulic, would you trust that Governor Palin would have the knowledge, credibility, bearing and calming influence on the country to handle the situation? Or would having her in the Oval Office freak you out in a deep way? I’d be frightened, and I expect a lot of people now supporting Governor Palin would think, “Oh God, what have I done.”
Of course, the honest answer that I think most people would have to give is clearly no. In other words, if you try to imagine how she would handle such a scenario, you would have to acknowledge that she is not ready to be President. Being unprepared and overwhelmed, she would probably overreact and make such a situation far worse than it had to be. As it is, I don’t trust McCain’s “knowledge, credibility, bearing and calming influence” were the Russians to send forces into a neighboring state, because I already know that McCain responds very poorly when the Russians do this. A President Palin would be even more pliable and susceptible to the worst impulses of her anti-Russian advisors. It also seems obvious to me that Obama, who isn’t really fit to be President (but then neither is McCain), is certainly on balance more competent than McCain and the prospect of him responding to these events is slightly less horrifying. It is a measure of how profoundly unsuited he is to the office McCain is seeking that even Obama inspires more confidence in most people in this country.
P.S. This is all increasingly irrelevant, since there is no realistic way that McCain is going to be elected one month from now.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
22 Responses to “Caring About Readiness Is Absurd”
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Knocking on wood, a couple more times.
Well, to be fair, Klein does have a point. Everyone knows that in a battle between McCain and Galactus, it’s McCain in a (cake)walk…
Quoth the man who predicted the inevitable downfall of Obama. ;)
Yes, well, my predictive powers have never been that good. I did think McCain was capable of pulling off a win pre-Palin and I thought Obama was very vulnerable, but when the financial sector imploded it became clear very quickly that McCain was finished. All things being equal, I think my claims about Obama made some sense, but things have changed quite dramatically in the last month.
Out of curiosity, could you name a few prominent politicians (or anyone else, for that matter) who you do think are fit to be President?
Also, I think you should stick to analysis, and stop making predictions. Given your record, your prediction that Obama’s now a shoo-in makes me nervous.
Reasonably qualified people might include Lugar, John Warner, Mark Warner and, yes, God help us, probably Jeb Bush. Tommy Thompson, whom I mocked so harshly once upon a time, looks like a demigod of executive accomplishment compared to these people. He was an atrocious campaigner, but a good governor, and there is something seriously awry in our system that the people who are competent and successful in governing are weeded out early on. These would be among the people I could imagine being President without worrying that they were going to get more of our people killed. Of the four nominees this year, Biden is the least ridiculous, and he’s pretty ridiculous.
Can you give any reason why my statement about the outcome of the election is wrong? Am I not confirming what you’ve been saying all year?
There is something seriously awry in our system that the people who are competent and successful in governing are weeded out early on.
Maybe it says something about the people who have power and influence in this country, but I also think that the result to which you refer is also a form of punishment. And it happens not only in politics, but other fields as well…
Daniel,
You don’t seem to understand that I’m just kidding with you. In other words, the fact that your predictions have been wrong so frequently makes me nervous, when you now predict an Obama victory. It’s almost the kiss of death. I’m just hoping it’s too late for you to screw this one up.
And don’t take this the wrong way. I enjoy your analysis, and think it’s first rate, even when I disagree. Predictions, however, just aren’t your forte.
As for your choices for President, I think you’re pretty establishment-oriented, and that surprises me. I think, however, that you’ll be surprised by how well Obama actually governs. As Krauthammer says, he’s both a first class intellect and has a first class temperament. Also, he seems to have put together an extremely competent campaign that demonstrates, how he will run his White House. Steady and well thought through. Not given to rash decisions, but following through on a long-term strategy. I’m not sure that any of the fellows you name have those qualities and abilities. But I do agree that McCain, despite his intelligence (which is second-rate, but on a par with those you have named) and experience, is simply not temperamentally suited for the Presidency
“What if the Silver Surfer came to Earth and said Galactus was going to consume the planet? Who would make him feel safe then?”
Dr. Doom. (You just know there’s a metal mask in Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe.)
I am fascinated by the list of politicians Daniel offers up as fit to serve. What are his measures of fitness, and how does he come by them? Are they distinct from his preferred qualities, positions, and experience (I trust)?
Does he hereby endorse each of these *men* as highly desirable presidential candidates from his own political perspective? Is not Richard Lugar utterly of the warlike school of foreign policy that Daniel rightly rejects as unconservative?
I lived in Wisconsin throughout Tommy Thompson’s terms as governor. He was indeed a highly popular personality and was among the most innovative of Republican governors during the period. But a review of his record will show that his initiatives were in fact quite supportive of welfare state (in the generic sense) liberalism, though they were dressed up in language that exploited racial and class-based antipathy to the recipients of state aid. Thompson for example initiated a state program of health care for children whose parents made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. I’d like to know how Thompson’s record in office squares with the attitudes so entertainingly describes here.
Also, why is Barack Obama unfit again? I forgot.
Obama is unfit because I believe he has no grasp of foreign policy realism and no experience as an executive of anything; the objectives of his stated foreign policy vision are overreaching and absurd, and far more so than can be said of any of the people I mentioned. That is one reason why. I think McCain is even worse, and his temperament alone probably disqualifies him.
I never said that any of them would be “highly desirable” candidates. I wouldn’t vote for any of them, and you could be sure that if any of them ever ran I would rail against them just as I have against Obama. But the reasons why I would not vote for them would be based on my disagreements with their views, and not their clear lack of readiness to hold the office they were seeking.
If I were going to limit my definition of who is qualified to those who agreed with my agenda, I would have to deem no politician except Ron Paul and possibly a few other House members to be qualified. At that point people would say I was living in a fantasy world.
Obviously, I would prefer governors who did not keep the welfare state functioning, and I would prefer Senators who were not as wedded to conventional foreign policy views as Warner and Lugar, but it seems plain to me that if we are talking about whether someone possesses the proper experience, temperament and understanding to hold such power the ones I listed would have some claim to being qualified. In terms of their policy views, the men I named are not much better and may be worse in some ways than Obama.
This was my attempt to be somewhat pragmatic and consider which politicians who are or soon will be in a federal office might measure up. If I had my way, we would have an entirely different political class, but I am attempting to say something about reasonably fit members of the political class in the real world. Arguably, by an ideal standard, virtually no one in this class is fit to hold the offices they *currently* have, but to apply such a standard is not very realistic.
It seems that your notion of “fit to be President” is mostly a matter of ideology, not basic competence. How can you suggest that Obama is not fit, because he lacks executive experience, but Ron Paul is, when he lacks executive experience? The question, I thought, was a non-ideological matter of a candidate’s ability to effectively govern, regardless of their ideology or party. For example, one might question whether Lincoln’s or FDR’s or Reagan’s policies were good for the country, but they certainly had the ability to govern. Obama may not have executive experience, like Lincoln, and he may have ideas that run counter to your own, like FDR, but I don’t have any doubt that he will be able to govern effectively, given his intelligence, temperment, discipline, and ability. Ron Paul, on the other hand, I think lacks the ability to effectively govern, so I really can’t see why you would put him on your list at all, other than ideology.
I also notice that you don’t list the guy you intend to vote for, Baldwin. Isn’t that a bit odd? (Not that it’s wrong, of course).
I also notice that you don’t list the guy you intend to vote for, Baldwin. Isn’t that a bit odd?
It’s probably because you asked for “a few prominent politicians.”
It leaves the question, does Daniel think Baldwin is qualified to be President?
I hadn’t seen that Daniel had announced his voting intention. Who is this Baldwin? Presumably not Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin’s Second Congressional District…
I wonder what evidence Daniel would marshall to show that Obama does not grasp foreign policy realism. He holds a degree in International Realtions from Columbia College. One does not come through a major university’s IR program without an understanding of basic balance-of-power realism. Although he certainly transgresses frequently what might be expected of a pure realist, I think no other doctrine would more closely describe the outlines of the international vision he has suggested in the campaign. The approving appeals to Kissinger would suggest as much.
What is mystifying to me is how a self-professed conservative would be taken with the vulgar, murderous logic of ninteenth- and twentieth-century power competition as the normative basis for American strategy in this century.
Haven’t conservatives moved past such moral capitulation in the past eight years, for better or worse?
Read Obama’s Foreign Affairs essay; read any of his policy speeches or his speech in Berlin. He thinks our security interests are tied inextricably–his word–to the security of all other countries. This tells me that he has a deeply warped understanding of the national interest, which is reflected in his policy views, and this is significantly worse than the more serious realists. I appeal to Prof. Bacevich’s statement: “When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s habit of spouting internationalist bromides suggests little affinity for serious realism. His views are those of a conventional liberal.”
Whether or not Obama understands what realism is, he doesn’t profess it and doesn’t want to practice it. But I am not “taken” with realism. Realists very often have warped definitions of the national interest as well, and they tend to go along with more aggressive interventionist schemes anyway. To my mind, realism is the closest thing on offer in the foreign policy establishment to a sane approach to the world, which does not mean that I think very much of it. Obama is still quite far away from this minimal standard and has a much more dangerous agenda than the average realist. So up to a point I think certain policy views are in themselves disqualifying, and a foreign policy that earns the plaudits of a Robert Kagan (as Obama’s has) is definitely one of those.
To say that Obama is not a non-interventionist would be irrelevant to most people, and to use this as a standard for judging politicians would mean that virtually all of them are badly lacking and unacceptable. I made the mistake of taking the question about qualifications seriously, since there seems to be an odd idea that if I think some pols are minimally qualified that I am therefore endorsing them or their views. I would find someone like Lugar to be minimally tolerable, which is hardly evidence of support or agreement. Mark Warner has been a reasonably successful executive, even though when it comes to his views I would not have much in common with him.
It is a measure of how poor I think the major party candidates are that I would sooner vote for a third party candidate with no experience in elected office. That’s why it’s called a protest vote–it’s a protest.
I didn’t suggest that the examples of qualified individuals offered necessarily amounted to endorsement, I was just inquiring whether this happened to be the case.
It is not the case that statements about collective security are inconsistent with realism. To the extent that realism offers a path to a predominantly peaceful world, it does so by attempting to balance powers against one another. If this is successfully done, the results would look quite a bit like some possible collective security arrangements. Realist calculations are likely to be used as means to further a broader security strategy in an Obama administration. Pure realism itself is not sufficient to provide security to the country in this world of interconnectedness and non-state actors.
Whereas I would argue that realism is insufficient to address current challenges, Daniel’s statement that realism is the closest thing to a sane approach to the world in use among American foreign policy practitioners strongly suggests that he believes that it is not a sane approach. What would a sane approach look like?
Pure realism itself is not sufficient to provide security to the country in this world of interconnectedness and non-state actors.
This needs some elaboration. What exactly would a collective security arrangement be able to accomplish with non-state actors that ‘pure realism’ cannot?
Chuck Baldwin is the Constitution Party candidate for President. You can check him our here:
http://www.baldwin08.com/
Read through his issues page, and you’ll see he’s quite the wacko. You gotta wonder how voting for this guy can in any way be seen as a protest vote against “unfit” candidates. Daniel’s sense of “fitness” and having the “qualifications” to be President is almost purely ideological, and has nothing to do with any actual ability to do the job. In other words, you are arguing with the wind.
ConradG,
I still think you are missing somethigng here. I read the issues page. For better or worse, for the most part, it’s pretty standard paleo positions. I mean, that’s what paleoconservatism is. While no paleo myself, I don’t find those positions, on balance, as “wacko” as you do. But by asking paleoconservatives to disavow Baldwin, you are asking them (in essence) to disavow paleoconservatism.
You might respond “well, that stuff is never going to fly with the public at large.” And it won’t. Most paleos know that. But they are either unwilling to compromise their ideals for political success, or, at least, unwilling to compromise them to the extent required for political success given the current two party system.
LM,
You may be right, I may not be aware enough of just how wacko the paleocons are, and Baldwin may be a fair representative of their views. I’ve already pointed out in a previous thread a number of positions of his which seem both extreme and profoundly, stupidly ignorant. Maybe much of the paleocon movement is just so extreme and ignorant, I don’t know. I don’t find all of Baldwin’s issue positions to be characterizable in that way, but enough are, in particular his central issue, the “Baldwin Doctrine”, to consider him an utterly pointless and irresponsible candidate. I don’t know what the point of “party building” is if all it means is gathering all the right wing wackos in one room. I would think it would mean some kind of real attempt to reach into the mainstream of politics and have make a serious attempt to alter the country’s political views, such that there’s at least a prayer of getting some parts of one’s agenda into law and governance. Otherwise, what the hell is the point?
I haven’t read all of Ron Paul’s policy views, but what I have does not seem wacko. I’ve read Daniel’s views on this blog for many months now, and they don’t seem wacko either. I’m familiar with other prominent paleos such as Buchanan of Poulos, etc., and they don’t seem wacko. I’m certainly aware that there’s a wacko fringe to the paleos and other right wingers, and Baldwin seems to belong to that group, rather than the group which is trying to maintain an intelligent connection to the mainstream. Maybe I don’t know where that line is in the paleo world. I’m sure you know it better. But honestly, how is the Baldwin Doctrine not wacko?