Campbell Public Affairs Institute

CAMPBELL PUBLIC AFFAIRS INSTITUTE

Commentaries on the American Presidency May, 2004

The 2004 Election: A Watershed Moment

David H. Bennett All presidential elections are colored by partisan rhetoric. The stakes are so high for so many that candidates and party activists—no matter what the year or what the Meredith Professor of History state of the union—insist that victory for their side is essential to insure the future. But this campaign year is different. There is bitterness in the air that is unmatched The Maxwell School of in modern history. Syracuse University It is not a byproduct the quadrennial struggle for office. It is the result of deep, unbridgeable ideological disagreements over domestic policy that have been years [email protected] in the making. It is the result of a wrenching dispute over a starkly different direction for American foreign and military policy put in motion by the incumbent administration. And it is the result of the extraordinary tone of personal animus injected into presidential politics in the 1990’s that now leads many on both sides of the party line to view the other candidate with poisonous contempt. This time, the partisan rhetoric is truly passionate and the outcome of this election will be a watershed moment in political history.

THE ASSAULT ON ACTIVIST GOVERNMENT

The debate about domestic policy and the agenda of the present White House stretches back through the Great Society programs of the sixties to the New Deal of the thirties and beyond. George W. Bush and his team set out to continue and vastly expand the work of the Reagan years, in which the assault on those activist presidential governments of the past had begun. The goal of Team Bush: dismantle, paralyze or privatize governmental programs or agencies established by the hated “reform” administrations, appoint youthful judges who would use the courts—for decades to come—as instruments of conservative ideology, reshape the tax code to reward those at the top while simultaneously shrinking revenues and thus starving social policies central to the vision of the despised reformers of the twentieth century.

With no mandate after the bizarre election outcome of 2000, the “compassionate

Campbell Public Affairs Institute conservative” candidate—-now a minority president polling over a half-million The Maxwell School of Syracuse University votes less than his rival—confounded analysts by rejecting moderation and coali- 306 Eggers Hall tion-building to aggressively pursue this assault on the programs of the past. Syracuse, New York 13244 315-443-9707/ Fax 315-443-9734 It was in the Progressive Era after the turn of the twentieth century that the first http://www.campbellinstitute.org activist presidents of the modern era attempted to use government—-as their cham- pions put it—to “adjust capitalism to democracy.” The industrial revolution had transformed America into the economic colossus that would own the future but it had produced a great concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few and of the very few. But the initiatives of the first powerful presidents of modern history to establish a Federal Trade Commission to police excesses by corporate giants, a Federal Reserve System to check the power of great private bankers, tariff and anti-trust legislation to ensure competition, were mild indeed and contained no real social agenda.

It took the Great Depression to provide the setting for a resurgent age of reform but also for the emergence of true presidential government. Responding to an economic collapse creating a crisis unmatched since the Civil War, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal vastly expanded that regulatory agenda first introduced by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. (There would be the SEC, FCC, NLRB, CAA and more.) It established the government as employ- er of last resort through a series of massive relief agencies. It created the most enduring piece of the contemporary “safety net” in Social Security. It supported strong labor legislation and gave judicial appointments to those who would not block activist programs. (In addition, the GI Bill, created in the war years, would demonstrate anew the impact and popularity of a big government program.)

Roosevelt was loathed by conservatives. They believed, with Herbert Hoover, that he was weakening the individual- ist ethos at the very heart of the “American Dream” by allowing free citizens to become dependent on “big daddy” government. “We are dealing with the intangibles of life and ideals,” was Hoover’s response. But so popular was the Roosevelt Revolution that the triumphant liberalism of the thirties would not be seriously challenged until the eighties.

The Republican Party abandoned the Hooverian conservatives in 1940. With the exception of Barry Goldwater’s dis- astrously unsuccessful effort in 1964, it would not offer a presidential candidate promising to repeal the New Deal for decades to come. It is true that Democrats Harry Truman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy—-despite domestic programs with Roosevelt-like names (Fair Deal, New Frontier)—would be unsuccessful in addressing the civil rights, health and education items on the “hidden agenda” left over from the New Deal. But there was no repealing what had been put in place and the opposition party did not try. Robert Taft, the true conservative “Mr. Republican,” was given a mon- ument on Capitol Hill by his party but not the nomination in 1952: that went to Dwight Eisenhower, the product of the eastern, “liberal” wing of his party. Ike was a “modern Republican” who certainly would not offer activist government—save for the Interstate Highway initiative—but would not try to gut New Deal programs.

But what was accomplished on LBJ’s watch was a concluding chapter in the construction of an activist presidential agenda that would infuriate ideological opponents and become the battle ground for White House struggles to come.

In the sixties, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society would build on them. He effectively used the huge “working majority” in Congress made possible by his crushing victory over Goldwater. This had been the byproduct not only of the failed conservative appeal of his rival, but of a resurgent economy, the triumphant passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and of the memories of the fallen JFK.

Now the president who “knew the deck on Capital Hill” presided over a spectacular legislative run of victories for activist government. He would put his stamp on the future and provide many more targets for attack by the present Bush team. There would be Medicare and Medicaid, the education titles, a series of environmental acts, and new regulatory agencies calling for protection of workers and consumer safety. There was funding for the arts, public broad- casting, mass transportation, and public housing. There were the varied initiatives that were part of the War on Poverty. And, of course, there was the continuation of the civil rights effort with the Voting Rights bill of 1965. Some of the Great Society programs were failures, some failed because they were never truly funded, but many became popular, enduring “entitlements” and—-along with others—changed the face of America.

2 Certainly, this run of victories was cut short as the nation and its president sank into the abyss of Vietnam and what that war meant to America at home as well as abroad. But what was accomplished on LBJ’s watch was a concluding chapter in the construction of an activist presidential agenda that would infuriate ideological opponents and become the battle ground for White House struggles to come, peaking now in election 2004.

But such struggles would not really begin until the eighties. And what made possible the assault from the right on a seemingly triumphant liberalism was a complicated matter. Vietnam played a role, but as we all know, there was much more.

The social upheavals of the sixties were a byproduct of cultural change, post-war prosperity and a dramatic moment in history. (Surely, most were unconnected to presidential government, although activist politics had an impact of some of them.) The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the student movement, the anti-war movement and the liberationist themes affecting other groups (Gay Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans) transformed the social landscape. Yet their very presence would be used by opponents of liberal activism in years to come.

It would be one of “projects” of that growing number of right-wing think tanks, journals, television outlets, and talk radio hosts emerging in the seventies, eighties and nineties to link these social movements of the sixties to the liberal political dominance of the time. Conservative ideologues would point to a decline of “traditional family values” as the product of the allegedly corrupting influence of these social movements and of political “liberalism.” If drug use was up, divorce rates climbing, birth rates among the unmarried rising, crime menacing urban communities it must be because of these movements of the sixties with their insidious impact on American life, movements that had been fostered, in some way, by liberal politicians and their programs.

There had to be another factor at work to give the right-wing its opportunity. It would be the shattering economic and military defeats of the seventies.

Of course, all of this was largely nonsense. Many participants in those movements had reviled “big government” even as they had “big business,” others had railed against Johnson as war maker. Neither the members of the “student movement” or the cultural rebels of the “Woodstock Nation” were fans of the Great Society; most had contempt for liberal politics. Certainly the crime, drug and divorce rates in the late seventies had their own complex causes and were not the product of social activism during the decade of upheaval. But the linkage between social problems and “liberalism” was shrewdly made by the resurgent ideologists of the new right, some of them claiming to be disillu- sioned former cold war liberals. In time, using this argument and others, they would succeed in making the “L” word a term of derision and force many ambitious political figures to abandon it.

There was another development that would accelerate this effort. That was the rise of the religious right in the seventies. It emerged out of a newly energized fundamentalist fervor in American Protestantism. This was a rebirth of the traditionalist reaction to church modernists’ rejection of biblical inerrancy that had led these religious conservatives to publish “The Fundamentals” in the early years of the twentieth century. Now fundamentalism was flourish- ing again in an America impacted by the social upheavals of the sixties, which challenged so many traditional mores. It grew in a nation menaced by the specter of nuclear war, because the fear of nuclear annihilation and prophecies of Armageddon seemed made for each other.

Fundamentalism was spreading across the land. But in Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and other new media celebrities, part of this resurgent fundamentalism featured ministers preaching more than the old time gospel. These televangelists had a political message for their audience of millions. The social program of the political right (embraced by Catholic conservatives as well)—-with its call to end abortion, block an equal rights amendment, put prayer in the schools and homosexuality in the closet, elect legislators and name judges who would endorse the view

3 of “pro-religious moralists” and reject the poisonous teachings of “secular humanists”—would be both shaped and strengthened by alliance with these religious activists. The new conservative right now would have a social agenda to go with its older political, economic and “moral” argument against activist presidential government.

Still, even the clever if wholly specious demonization of sixties liberalism by ideologists of the neoconservative right and the powerful proselytizing by the leaders of the new religious right could not have undermined support for the age of reform put in place by activist presidents. There had to be another factor at work to give the right-wing its opportunity. It would be the shattering economic and military defeats of the seventies that would provide that opportunity.

The great inflation and the oil crises of ‘73 and ’79 had a terrible impact. The economy was ravaged by rising prices and interest rates, unemployment and a sinking stock market, the downward spiral of the gross national product. The auto and steel industries—the muscle of America—-suddenly were shattered and many proud northern cities sank into the “rust belt.” The Economist magazine declared “the end of the American century.” The great nation that always seemed self sufficient now could be coerced by the sheiks of OPEC. The humiliations of the final defeat in Vietnam in ’75 and the hostage crisis in Iraq in ‘79 added to despair; seemingly overnight America was looking like what Richard Nixon had warned against: “a pitiful helpless giant.”

And during this period, the presidency was in shambles. LBJ had been pushed from office in 1968 by the Vietnam debacle. Richard Nixon was impeached and forced to resign in an ulcerating series of scandals involving the corruption of power; his Vice-President—-exposed as an extortionist—was forced out in an unrelated scandal involving the corruption of money. The “imperial presidency,” an office swollen with authority as a result of activist White House leadership in domestic affairs and because power had been concentrated there with the international crises of World War II and the Cold War, now would be assailed from all sides. Recent presidents had been reviled as liars, crooks, and corrupters; not surprisingly, their successors in the seventies, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, would lack popular and congressional support. This only added to their burdens as they wrestled unsuccessfully with immensely difficult economic and military challenges in their troubled decade.

The “defeats of the seventies” would lead to Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 and provide the setting for the so-called “Reagan Revolution.” Of course, Reagan would be elected more for the failures of his rival than his personal appeal that year: the burning helicopters of the disastrous hostage rescue mission in the spring and the inflation rate approach- ing 20 percent doomed Carter’s re-election hopes. Yet the very distrust many had for the presidency because of the problems of his predecessors would provide an opportunity for the newly elected “great communicator.” Presidential power might be questioned because of events in the preceding years, but there also was a longing for presidential leadership in a nation facing so many daunting problems.

Ronald Reagan and his team grasped the opportunity. Building on the neoconservatives’ denigration of liberal activist government-—“we had a war on poverty and poverty won”—-the Reaganites used the crisis to argue that the economic setbacks of the seventies were a byproduct of the dominant liberal agenda of the past. This argument was no more valid than their accusation that liberalism was responsible for social problems traced back to the sixties. But their success in this tactic completed the work of demonizing “liberalism.” The new case: if we got government “off our backs and out of our pockets” by deregulating the economy and sharply cutting taxes on those who “created wealth,” all would be well. Repealing what one aide called “twenty years of failed federal programs” (and what the new president had once referred to as “fifty yeas of failed federal programs”) was central to the plan.

There would also be efforts to at least pay lip service to the social agenda of President Reagan’s religious right supporters; judges would be appointed who could check government power over the economy while protecting “traditional family values.” And, of course, there would be a huge defense buildup to make sure America “stood tall” once more in the world, following the humiliations of the seventies.

Supply-side economics, embraced by key Reagan advisors, held that you could cut taxes and not raise the national debt. But it did not work. Adding almost $1.5 trillion in defense spending while providing over $1.5 trillion in tax cuts created a huge budget deficit and tripled the national debt. Some conservative aides wanted massive cuts in spending to ameliorate this problem, but the President would not comply. The “entitlement programs” and some other

4 initiatives put in place by those activist presidential predecessors were too popular; you could not attack Medicare or Medicaid or eliminate higher education grant/loan policies. In any case, the Democratic majority in Congress would be an obstacle.

Thus, Ronald Reagan could only begin the assault on big government. The President lacked the will and the Congressional majority to complete the job. But there were conservative theorists in his circle who believed that mushrooming debt might do it instead. The bewildered chief executive, an economic innocent promising to cut the debt during his campaign, was puzzled by this failure of “Reagonomics,” but the ideologues of the right privately gloated that the huge new debt would deny any future activist administrations the resources to resume their efforts at government spending. “Starving the beast” was the phrase used by these enemies of the liberal past.

In the end, Ronald Reagan’s successor would struggle with economic problems inherited from these years. The “Reagan Revolution” had concentrated wealth even more at the top of the economic ladder but had left most American family incomes behind; it also left the nation with a massive debt problem. George H. W. Bush had no clear domestic agenda He famously referred to it as “the vision thing.” Moreover, he had angered conservatives hoping to continue the attack on the activist past by talking of the “kinder, gentler government” that he would like to lead, but while “our will is strong, our wallet is thin.” When he was beaten by Bill Clinton in 1992 during a painful recession, even those uninterested in politics knew of the sign in Clinton headquarters: “it’s the economy, stupid.”

Would Clinton offer a return to the activist agenda of the past? He would be constrained in two ways. His role in the Democratic Leadership Council signaled a belief that endorsing a major expansion of Great Society style big government would be quixotic and self-defeating in the nineties; the Reaganites’ assault on government as “the problem not the solution” had shaped public and congressional attitudes. More important, his desire to revive the sagging economy—-clear prerequisite for a successful administration—would be dependent on a reduction of the huge debt burden. He had to become a “deficit hawk.” (In any event, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan could throttle the Clintonian agenda through interest rate hikes if he did not act quickly to cut the deficit.) It was a central irony of the moment that “conservatives” had built a mountain of debt and made their “big spending” adversaries call for fiscal prudence.

Bill Clinton led an economic team that made a remarkable record. By the end of his second term, the $290 billion deficit he had inherited had been eliminated and the budget surplus in 2000 would top $200 billion. The immense national debt was being repaid and over 22 million jobs had been created, millions more than in the 12 years before. The real wage increase of 6.5% in his eight years was in sharp contrast to the real wage decline of 4.3% in the preceding years. Unemployment was down from 7.5% to 3.9% and the child poverty rate had fallen for five consecutive years.

There were many reasons for these economic achievements. Surely, the rise of the “new economy”—with computer, internet and high technology companies playing a pivotal role—-would accelerate the escalating rates of productivi- ty in the newly prosperous American nineties. But the Clinton team’s insistence on cutting the deficit through a tax hike on the wealthiest, passed by one vote over unanimous opposition of Senate Republicans warning that economic disaster would result, was a critical factor. Supporting elimination of international trade barriers by embracing NAFTA and GATT, over bitter opposition of Democratic labor interests pointing to problems created by such action, was another driving force in jump-starting the sputtering economy.

Clinton would a pay a price for tax hikes and trade policies. With the “stealth politics” of the Christian Coalition also having an impact, these unpopular positions with key constituencies on both sides of the political lines led to the shocking GOP triumph in the midterm 1994 election. Bill Clinton already had failed with his most ambitious “big government” effort, the overly complex health care reform proposal that was throttled by opponents within his party as well as the opposition. Now he would have to use presidential cunning to checkmate the right-wing “Contract With America” program of powerful Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich and—-with little hope of getting Congress to fund new programs—-to shape progressive policy by using the tax code.

A huge expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (a kind of negative income tax) would help those at the bottom. The Hope Scholarship and Lifelong Learning initiatives would widen educational opportunities. The student Direct

5 Loan Program, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and AmeriCorps were other legislative successes.

In the end, Bill Clinton, who had promised to “focus like a laser beam on the economy,” did make significant contri- butions to the activist tradition. But his failure on health care, his refusal to advocate major spending programs (which would have no chance in the Congressional climate of this time), his acceptance of a modified version of welfare reform, and his gratuitous statement that “the era of big government is over” won no friends among many liberal pundits and politicians.

It is curious that this leader—no hero to so many liberals—would become the object of such bitter hatred among angry conservatives. In fact, they would spend much of his administration trying to demean, disable and destroy him. But he had infuriated them by shrewdly stealing some of the favorite sticks they had used to bludgeon “bleeding heart” opponents, like fighting crime by putting more police on the streets. And his remarkable political skills made him a formidable figure whose reputation had to be demolished if they were to take the White House. For those who played key roles in the concerted series of attacks on Bill Clinton represented a powerful new ideological force now domi- nating the party opposing activist government.

It is curious that this leader—no hero to so many liberals—would become the object of such bitter hatred among angry conservatives.

More moderate Republicans had been purged from the GOP Congressional leadership by Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott and like-minded colleagues. As Lyndon Johnson had predicted, the Civil Rights Act had doomed his party in much of the South; conservative southern Democrats had switched sides. Now more passionate political ideologues were in charge in Washington and would work with the expanding world of right-wing think tanks and media outlets to shape a partisan crusade. None of this had been fully in place during the Reagan administration.

The new right had completed the conquest of the GOP. And for its leaders, this is not just politics. These are true believers. And what they believe is that they are the real protectors of the American way of life. Those reform administrations of the twentieth century had been destructive of American values; they must be relegated to the dustbin of history.

When they came to power in 2001, after the grim spectacles of the impeachment effort of 1998 and the Florida vote count of 2000, the conservative enemies of activist government would try to complete the work of that earlier effort to dismem- ber the New Deal-Great Society tradition during the Reagan years.

George W. Bush, unlike his father, would be the perfect chief executive for new right policy makers. He supported a renewed series of huge tax cuts for the wealthiest. He appointed to regulatory agencies—-for the securities industry, the environment, occupational safety, and in many other areas—administrators who opposed regulation. He offered judicial nominations (including recess appointments when blocked by Congress) to youthful figures on record as supporting positions endorsed by both economic and social conservatives.

Not surprisingly, his tax and military spending programs would lead to another spectacular increase in the national debt. But, of course, ground already was being prepared for the debate over continuation of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Reagan would not touch these icons of the activist past, the popular “third rails” of American politics. But Bush and his team insists that these programs, which all agree will face differing challenges in the future, now cannot be afforded by America. This White House offers to “reform” them through privatization.

The objective, of course, is to weaken or dismantle these programs. It is part of the continuing debate about the role of government.

6 The activists across the last century have sought to use government to create a more equitable society, providing opportunity for those left behind and a social safety for all. Their goal has been to shape government policies to pro- tect both the environment and the public against the excesses of free enterprise. They have endeavored to draft and fund programs to improve public welfare in a variety of ways.

Their opponents have insisted that it is essential to cut the umbilical cord connecting Americans to government and end programs discouraging individual initiative and responsibility. The free market should be left to work its mira- cles and the entrepreneurial genius of economic winners should not be discouraged by “confiscatory” taxes. People in this unique nation should be encouraged to stand on their own feet like independent men and women. Of course, depraved (and sinful) social practices should be sanctioned and outlawed — the one exception that must be made to the rule of limited government.

The election of 2004 will be both a referendum on the past and critical to shaping the future in ways few elections have in modern history.

The terrorist attack on 9/11 would have a huge impact on such domestic policy debates as well as so much else in American life. Before the attack, the minority president had weak poll numbers and the GOP seemed unlikely to cap- ture the Senate (along with the House) in 2002. But with new popular support for a “wartime” chief executive, and with a shameless manipulation of the politics of patriotism in the midterm election, the Bush administration achieved a majority in both houses of Congress to push forward with its agenda. Moreover, the resurgent and passionately ideological Republican leadership of the House and Senate have broken new ground in the manipulation of Congressional rules to create a stranglehold on policy, even with their narrow majorities in both chambers. Not only have they have disciplined the few reluctant members of their party caucuses but they have succeeded in virtually eliminating contri- bution by the Democratic opposition. Some analysts fear this could lead to a “legislative dictatorship.”

Will the effort to demolish much of the activist tradition succeed? The election of 2004 will be both a referendum on the past and critical to shaping the future in ways few elections have in modern history. Democrat John F. Kerry will defend the programs and agencies under attack by George W. Bush and his administration. In domestic policy terms, this is the pivotal election for both sides.

ARADICAL CHANGE IN FOREIGN POLICY

The same is true for foreign and military affairs. As with the domestic agenda of the present White House, it is clear that there also has been a radical new direction given to U.S. foreign policy. And it is a direction forcefully rejected by the candidate of the opposition party.

The key document here is the National Security Strategy of the United States, issued by the new administration in early 2002. This laid out what has become known as “The Bush Doctrine.” It calls for a peculiar mixture of isolation- ism and imperialism and is a striking departure from the foreign policy posture of America for almost a century.

There is no doubt about the isolationist component. Before 9/11 and even before it was formally stated as the “national strategy,” the unilateralist impulse behind the doctrine was being implemented by the Bush Administration. It rejected the Kyoto accords on climate warming, opposed international efforts to ban anti-ballistic missiles, ensure non- proliferation and endorse women’s rights. It “unsigned” the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and declared the U.S. no longer bound by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

7 But there is also an imperialist tone and swagger to the Bush Doctrine. The United States, it is argued, reserves the right to pre-emptive strikes against presumed enemies and it need not act in concert with other nations. There is a strident celebration of America’s military dominance in the post cold war world (in which the U.S. is the only superpower) and a promise to refuse to allow any nation to threaten our preeminence. While many in Europe and elsewhere reacted negatively to this “arrogance of power” (and the bellicose rhetoric accompanying it by key policy makers, as when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed France and Germany as “old Europe”), right-wing pundits rallied to the cause. “We run a uniquely benign imperium,” one wrote; “we are living in a hinge moment in history,” another exclaimed, in endorsing the right of America to do what it wants wherever it wants.

When the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck that fateful morning in September, the United States responded by attacking Afghanistan, where the Taliban leadership provided safe haven for the training camps used by terrorists who had attacked America. Any President of the United States would have used force against the protectors of Al Qaeda at this moment in history. But the Bush team skillfully used the outrage in the nation and the world to secure Pakistani support; it then effectively reached out to the Northern Alliance adversaries of the Taliban for help that would shorten the conflict. Certainly, the American military utilized both air power (with smart weaponry) and Special Forces with extraordinary skill. Soon the Taliban fled from the capital in Kabul. All this was not part of the Bush Doctrine but it was an essential answer to 9/11. The problem was that this “war on terrorists” in Afghanistan was not completed; the authors of the Bush Doctrine had other plans. They now would turn away from the Afghan effort in order to pursue their larger imperial agenda.

But there is also an imperialist tone and swagger to the Bush Doctrine.

The Doctrine appears to be the creation of a small group of hawkish defense intellectuals forming the brain trust for Rumsfeld’s Defense Department and the influential office of Vice President Cheney. The key players are now widely known to even casual students of recent events. Paul Wolfowitz, former Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies serving as Rumsfeld’s deputy, clearly is the central figure in this group. Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the time of the issuance of the National Strategy, was a forceful presence. Other like-minded figures: Douglas Feith, a Perle disciple working as undersecretary of defense for policy, J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defense for national security, I. W. Libby, a key aide to Cheney and John Bolton, a protégé of former Senator Jesse Helms, placed at the State Department. (Bolton once exclaimed that “there is no such thing as the United Nations, there is an international community that can be led by the only real power left in the world.”)

Supporting these policy makers has been a varied group of right-wing writers, editors, columnists and think tank regu- lars—-many of them well known neoconservatives—who added a strong media voice that has amplified and endorsed the position. Like their policy-making colleagues, most of them had been shaping the case for what became the “doctrine” over the preceding decade, notably in the Project for the New American Century, organized long before election 2000.

After 9/11, the arguments behind the Bush Doctrine were enthusiastically received by Rumsfeld and Cheney and adopted by the White House. They appeared to embrace the thesis presented by Wolfowitz and company: in the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the inevitable rise of a Chinese military superpower, the United States will stand alone as the dominant force on the planet. If America uses a muscular foreign policy at this unique moment of our unprecedented and unchallenged power, we can overcome problems in a dangerous world, bring security to our people, peace to troubled regions, and promote U.S. interests everywhere. If American leaders stop acting like wimps (as in the Clinton years) and act as if they are from Mars (as opposed to weakling Europeans, who, as in one neoconservative cheerleader’s book, are from Venus), we can ensure the widespread triumph of democracy and free market capitalism. (Of course, this should include lower marginal tax rates in such democracies. The National Security document actually includes such a statement.)

8 To achieve these goals, Afghanistan was not important.

After the initial success, promises to “hunt down” and “smoke out” the terrorist leadership were all but forgotten as were promises of vast aid to rebuild that troubled nation. Instead of finishing the job against the terrorists, the Pentagon tasked Pashtun warlords with “closing the back door” at Tora Bora, thus allowing terrorist leaders to escape. The U.S. then sharply cut its troop involvement and now violence reigns in many areas. It is once more “Warlordistan,” as one writer put it, a wrecked and dangerous world in which the Taliban is returning, corruption is everywhere, heroin is rife, and the nation’s chief executive relegated to being Mayor of Kabul. The “war on terror” was largely a failure in Afghanistan because the Doctrine authors had another goal: this was war against Iraq.

They believed that quick victory in Baghdad would be prelude to an American inspired reordering of political and social developments across the Middle East and South Asia. Somehow, removing Saddam Hussein would allow the Arab-Israel crisis to be resolved and Islamic fundamentalism tamed while the U.S.—-with a friendly new client state in Iraq—would find itself no longer dependent on unstable Saudi Arabia for oil or held hostage to the whims of OPEC. Moreover, other “rogue states” (such as North Korea or Iran)—and even reluctant allies—would be disciplined by the use of American firepower in our easy war against what was now a third rate military.

What all this had to do with terrorism was unclear. The intelligence community had found no connection between the secular despotism of Saddam and the religious fanatics behind 9/11 who always had reviled him. But to sell the case for the Iraq invasion, the grandiose vision behind the Doctrine was not enough: it must be argued that weapons of mass destruction were in the hands of Saddam and menaced America, that such WMD could be given to terrorists by the Iraqis. While critics in 2002 and early 2003 argued that this was a flawed case based on cooked intelligence—-and revelations since have confirmed their skepticism—-those promoting the Iraq war shrewdly used the politics of patriotism to paralyze a weak and divided Democratic opposition and to distract the compliant national media. Public rage and fear stimulated by 9/11 was focused on a military effort to secure the nation by punishing somebody.

There was no question Saddam would be quickly crushed when war came. His forces—-as the Doctrine authors understood—were a paper tiger and much smaller than during their ignominious collapse in the “mother of all wars” in 1991. Quick victory by the brilliant U.S. military did not create riots in the famous “Arab street.” But the White House and the civilian leadership in the Pentagon—-seemingly as inept as they were arrogant—underestimated the problems that would follow; chaos reigned even as Baghdad fell to American tanks and infantry. And the postwar environment has become a sorry tale.

What the critics feared has come to pass in Iraq. They had predicted that an American invasion without UN support, with only the British and a few others in a ramshackle, largely illusory “coalition of the willing,” would stimulate hostility in Iraq and around the world. Now, instead of contributing to the “war on terror,” occupied Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorists there and elsewhere. The invasion has led to huge protests in Europe, turning univer- sal sympathy for America after 9/11 to bitter anger at what is seen as a bullying, imperialist action, undermining America’s moral leadership in the minds of millions. The war has become an economic sinkhole—-with favored con- tractors profiting but with U.S. taxpayers facing an enormous bill for years to come. It has put immense strains on the American military; hundreds of lives have been lost thus far and thousands of life-changing injuries will affect families for decades to come.

Instead of reducing the threat of WMD, the Doctrine may have stimulated nuclear proliferation by focusing attention on a non-nuclear state (Iraq) while turning away from dangerous developments in North Korea. In fact, the assertion of a right to pre-emptive war, accompanied by the listing of states involved in an “axis of evil” threatening the U.S., might have encouraged the nuclear ambitions of those fearing a newly aggressive superpower.

What began as a war of liberation has become a war of occupation. The scornful comments of many Iraqis interviewed by western journalists—-not violent “insurgents,” just people on the street—are now reminiscent of the reaction of those resisting American policy in Vietnam. Saddam was a vicious, megalomaniacal tyrant who should have been thrust from power in 1991 and not the leader of a nationalist (if ruthless), anti-colonial movement like Ho Chi Minh; Iraq is not Vietnam. But there is some resonance of that earlier debacle. The U.S. superpower sweeping through this Islamic land has become for many the surrogate for earlier western colonialists. Because of the way this unilateral

9 adventure was conceived and implemented by the Bush Administration, we run the risk—-as an early critic of Vietnam once said—-of “going over to the wrong side of history.”

To justify the war as the bad news mounts from Iraq, George W. Bush and his team have spoken with one voice: the war was conducted to bring democracy to the victims of despotism and to combat terrorism. Forgotten is the talk of WMD or the absence of a real linkage between Al Quaeda and Saddam. (But so successful was the pre-war media campaign that over 50% of Americans in spring 2004 still believe these baseless arguments used to lead the U.S.A. into this conflict.) Forgotten as well is the “Mission Accomplished” sign erected on the carrier for the president’s tel- evised victory performance, or his taunt, “Bring Them On,” when referring to violent opponents of U.S. presence in Iraq.

Of course, “democracy” will be difficult to impose in a land ravaged by religious and ethnic tensions and without any tradition of such government. But all Americans must hope that some successful conclusion can be found in Iraq. For the shapers of the Bush Doctrine have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Iraq was not a front in the “war on terror” before the conflict, but it is now. As many critics argue, the U.S. cannot simply “cut and run,” leaving the mess the Bush team made behind. That might result in the emergence of a kind of huge pre 9/11 Afghanistan, a land of violent religious and ethnic strife, a failed state in which terrorists would flourish, threatening America and the world.

The Bush Doctrine (and those actions taken following its introduction) represents a new departure in America foreign policy.

The Bush Doctrine (and those actions taken following its introduction) represents a new departure in America foreign policy. Certainly, there have always been disagreements about the U.S. role in the world. Isolationists confronted internationalists in the years before World War I and World War II. Politicians, pundits and scholars long have debat- ed the proper use and meaning of “containment” in the 40 year Cold War era. “Realists” have assailed “idealists” over “humanitarian” international initiatives. But this aggressive, triumphalist, unilateral posture in the post cold war moment is unprecedented in modern American history. The Doctrine marks a rejection of the Wilsonian and Rooseveltian visions that produced international organizations and multilateral policies embraced by almost every modern president. It creates the image of a dominant imperialist America. (And one very much unlike the imperialist actions in the Caribbean and Central America taken by a far weaker U.S. during the age of European great pow- ers.) The makers of the Bush Doctrine might think their America is a “benign imperium;” too many others around the world do not agree.

In election 2004, there will be a referendum on this major new development in public life. Of course, it may be that the failure of the Bush Doctrine thus far in Iraq will make it impossible to continue such adventures in the future; when again will the American public accept arguments such as the ones leading to this outcome? But at this historical junc- ture, there are dramatic differences between the candidates on the proper role for America in the world. The result in the fall will be as significant in this area as the outcome of the debate over domestic policy.

ASTRONG PRESIDENT?

Whatever one’s view about the direction taken in foreign and domestic affairs, any election in which an incumbent seeks another term inevitably raises the question of whether the president has been a strong leader.

President George W. Bush’s supporters have no doubt about the answer. They insist that he has a “vision” in both

10 domestic and foreign affairs—-the very vision that makes this such a critical election——and he has demonstrated the organizational capacity and political skill which has put his signature on events in both areas. Moreover, they argue, he has connected with the public after the crisis of 9/11 because he is a man of faith and a spokesman for American patriotism at a somber yet historic hour for the nation.

But critics are not so sure that the person in this White House is a strong president. Although he has able speechwrit- ers and has learned to read their texts, he is painfully inarticulate away from the teleprompter. This problem with com- munication skills is not unconnected to his lack knowledge (and curiosity) about critical issues, his failure to read widely about complex questions, and thus his dependence on key aides and administrative colleagues to shape policy.

The Bush Doctrine seems to fit the role George W. Bush most fancies: tough leader who will brook no opposition as he makes the world safe for American interests. No real explanation necessary, all that is required is “moral clarity.” But he did not create or define the policy. The neoconservatives were the central draftsmen of the Doctrine. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, dominant figures in the administration, persuaded this president—-who had talked of “modesty” in foreign affairs and derided “nation building” as a candidate—-to embrace it.

Similarly, in domestic affairs he has rejected his father’s more middle road position and abandoned the “compassionate conservative” rhetoric of his first campaign to accept the agenda of the dominant ideologists in the right wing of his party. The success of their legislative assault on positions of the past is less a measure of his “leadership” than their control of Congress.

This year, there will be fewer citizens who believe that “all politicians are alike” and that there is little to choose on presidential election day.

But whether President George W. Bush is admired or derided for his leadership skills, he has become the lightning rod in a passionate and divisive race in 2004. The electorate is dramatically and bitterly polarized this election year. And it is not only because of policy disagreements or even the “cultural” divide between partisans in “Red” states and “Blue” states. It is also because of the politics of personal animus that marked national public affairs in the nineties. In those years, there was such incandescent hostility toward Bill Clinton that some Clinton-haters would not speak his name or even tolerate his image on their televisions. Now, with memories of the impeachment effort in 1998 and the Florida vote count in 2000 fresh in their minds, angrily responding to what they believe a record of unethical tactics by the present White House team, there are Bush-haters aplenty to match the partisans on the other side.

In the nineties, the Lewinsky matter and the impeachment effort it generated represented new kind of scandal in presidential politics. It was not about money (as with Grant and Harding) or about power (as with Watergate and Iran- Contra); it was about “character.” Bill Clinton was presented as an immoral man, a sexual libertine and liar disgrac- ing his office, the embodiment of those problems “liberal” attitudes had brought to the nation. He was “Slick Willie,” the person right-wing talk radio hosts and think tank publicists had been describing for years as a draft-dodger, cor- rupt opportunist and deviant manipulator. Not only “Born Again Christians” and those influenced by the religious right responded to this portrait of the man in the White house. Not only anti-abortion and gun-lobby militants seethed with anger. For many others who already disliked his policies, he became a figure of loathing.

In campaign 2000, there was the usual effort to negatively “define” each candidate by the opposition, but neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush elicited the partisan anger directed at Clinton. That has changed. There is pent up resent- ment in the ranks of those who consider the effort to demonize the former president a disgraceful chapter in history.

While Bill Clinton may have given his enemies the instrument with which to attack him in the sordid Lewinsky affair, those who supported him and now oppose the incumbent see the series of baseless “scandals” (Whitewater,

11 “Travelgate,” “Filegate,” “Troopergate”) invented by Clinton’s opponents as part of a new and ugly development in politics. They point to the “Arkansas Project” of Clinton-haters early in his administration as the evidence that enemies would do anything to destroy him. The Paula Jones case, with its secret team of right-wing lawyers, the appoint- ment and performance of prosecutor Kenneth Starr, with his unethical press leaks and lurid “Starr Report,” the entire partisan impeachment effort, are other cases in point.

If the right-wing attack on Clinton was not enough to energize partisans, there is the 2000 vote. Because of a widespread feeling that continuing to discuss the disputed election would weaken presidential legitimacy, the Florida vote is unspoken but it is remembered nonetheless. The GOP mob Tom Delay sent down from Washington to intimidate vote counters in Dade County when it appeared Gore might win, the differential counting of Republican absentee bal- lots in Martin and Seminole Counties, the actions of the Supreme Court Five in stopping a recount are not forgotten.

There are those who will vote for John Kerry or—-as in the internet message—-ABB, Anybody But Bush. They insist that this year it is not politics as usual; the opposition is led by true believers who will do anything to win. They showed it in the nineties and 2000. And now, with the arrogant actions of Bush team members—-like Dick Cheney and his “secret” Energy Task Force, like Attorney General John Ashcroft and disturbing aspects of his USPATRIOT Act—there is additional reason to support anybody but this incumbent. For them, George W. Bush not only threatens the long tradition of activist domestic governance and offers a disastrous new direction in foreign policy, he is the ben- eficiary and present embodiment of destructive political tactics.

Opposing them will be fervent partisans supporting George W. Bush. His repeated references to his faith in God, his proud celebration of flag and country, his aura of certainty in confronting “the terrorists” and other enemies of America, his scornful denigration of “elites” and similar naysayers, makes him a hero in the precincts that responded to attacks on Bill Clinton. These passionate Bush supporters, who endorse his domestic and foreign policy agenda and like his style, will be contemptuous of his opponent.

This year, there will be fewer citizens who believe that “all politicians are alike” and that there is little to choose on presidential election day. This year, the choice is stark and the stakes are huge.