Congress » Undiplomatic

3 October 2008 Charles J. Brown
02:26 pm

Harumph

So the bailout passed. Can’t say I’m thrilled. Congress did not exactly cover itself in glory here, and they’ve given far too much away both to Paulson and Wall Street. I’m still not sure why an interim $150 billion dollar package would not have made just as much sense.

Judging by the reports coming out of Sacramento and Detroit, this is only the end of the beginning. And the TED Spread went up today, higher than it’s ever been. Unless the credit crunch begins to ease, things aren’t going to get better anytime soon.

In terms of politics, I doubt that this will help the McCain campaign. First, it reminds people of the mess we’re in. Second, it takes attention away from last night’s debate. Third and most importantly, it reminds everyone of how ineptly he handled things during the first bailout vote, and highlights that this got done even though he did not suspend his campaign.

Barack Obama probably should benefit, both in terms of his willingness to step forward and push for the bailout, and his role in convincing a number of Democrats to switch their vote. Given the polls showing that Biden won last night, it’s going to take a major meltdown or an unexpected foreign policy crisis for Obama to lose at this point.

Morning Haikus

Nancy partisan?
Republicans are angry!
Those whiny dillweeds.

;

Boehner or McCain. . .
Who is the bigger dillweed?
Best to pick them both.

;

Could Bush be any
More inconsequential? No!
Worst prez ever? Yes!

;

Bernanke, Paulson
Believe the sky is falling.
Confidence plummets.

Snapshot: Politicians and the Bailout

This poll from Gallup came out before the vote this afternoon but I still find it worth passing on:

The public isn’t very happy with anyone at the moment, with only Obama having more approve than disapprove. What I find particularly striking is the fact that McCain is blamed more than Democrats in Congress and lonly slightly less than Republicans. Given that fact, does he really think that his current strategy is going to work, especially given his posturing this morning about having made the bailout happen?

Then again, this is the guy who thought both Sarah Palin and suspending his campaign would be winners.

As my dad said to me six months ago, we don’t need experience, we need judgment.

Back to Square One

The House has rejected the bailout bill:

In a moment of historic drama in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote against the measure was 228 to 205. Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up for consideration against as soon as possible.

Stock markets plunged sharply at midday as it appeared that the measure would go down.

House leaders pushing for the package kept the voting period open for some 40 minutes past the allotted time, trying to convert “no” votes by pointing to damage being done to the markets, but to no avail.

We’re about to find out whether Bernanke and Paulson’s “sky is falling” approach was more than scare tactics.

Almost from the beginning, I have felt that this was a crisis of confidence, not liquidity, and that Paulson and Bernanke’s panic only exacerbated a difficult situation. As a result, the immediate response is, of course, panic. The Dow Industrials, as of this writing, is down 530 points (6.5 percent), and NASDAQ is down nearly 130 (5.9 percent). The TED spread is 3.37, up from 2.92 at the start of the day.

One of the big questions I have about this is whither the two Presidential candidates? Both had backed this iteration, but this throws the door open again for one of them (most likely McCain) to seize the growing populist backlash against any bailout. That could be dangerous for the country and the economy, especially since a McCain Administration is highly unlikely to implement the kinds of regulations needed or utilize the government’s resources to help Main Street.

I haven’t had a chance to look at a breakdown of how the House voted, but I’m guessing progressives and ultra-conservatives united to block the bill. Given their different agendas, the House leadership has to decide which it wants to satisfy. I can only hope it’s the latter, and that, despite some rough waters in the short run, the end result of today’s vote will be a much better bill.

The Sorry State of State

Last week when I posted twenty questions for the debate, number two on my list concerned the sorry state of our foreign policy apparatus:

Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed. Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns. Congress has largely been unsympathetic. What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?

For far too many years, successive Administrations have ignored the State Department, allowing its capabilities to erode at the same time that its workload has increased exponentially. I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but I would bet good money that in the past twenty years, the number of bureaus and offices in the Department has doubled at the same time that the number of personnel has declined by at least ten percent.

This is one crisis that cannot be blamed solely on the Bush Administration — although it certainly has done its part. The decline of State really began in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when those Presidents came to rely more on National Security Advisors and Secretaries of Defense than Secretaries of State — a pattern that has continued to this day (with the possible exceptions of George Schultz, James Baker and Condi Rice). It declined further under Nixon-Kissinger, in large part because of the duo’s disdain for the so-called east coast liberal elites that they thought dominated Foggy Bottom.

Congress also must share the blame. Year after year, the House and the Senate do little to grow the budget of State. When I was helping to run strategic planning for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, we were constantly struggling to manage a budget that the building’s finance people would not allow to grow even at the rate of inflation. One year, when Congress mandated that our budget be greater than it had been in the past, they required the Department to carve it out of existing funding rather than adding new money. You can imagine how popular that made us with other bureaus facing cutbacks.

At the same time that Congress refuses to spend more, they keep piling on the responsibilities. My favorite example of this is Congress’s mania for reports. Each year, by Congressional fiat, the State Department must produce lengthy, multi-volume reports on the state of human rights, religious freedom, trafficking, and terrorism (and those are only the ones I know about). Each runs into the thousands of pages and requires the work of innumerable foreign service officers who must spend their time at desks writing the damn things rather than getting out and finding out what is going on.

To be clear, I am not advocating for the elimination of all reports. But I see no reason why it is necessary to have three separate reports on human rights issues.

Even reforms, no matter how well-intentioned, have created problems:

In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed to move diplomats “out from behind their desks into the field”—away from places like Western Europe and into developing nations where they would play a more hands-on development role. But her plan, however laudable, was put forth without the money and smart management needed to make it work. Now seasoned diplomats are fleeing Foggy Bottom in droves, leaving America critically short on diplomatic expertise just when it is needed most.

The State Department, by its own projections, will lose 14 percent of its veteran diplomats every year from 2007 to 2011—an entire generation in a few years’ time. The talent pool is shrinking, too; the number of people taking the foreign-service exam fell more than 40 percent between 2002 and 2006. Under Colin Powell, State had hoped to hire more than 1,000 officers, but the department’s latest budget sought fewer than 300. And because Rice didn’t push hard enough for that funding, the department may actually lose jobs this year. The dire situation has officials counting paper clips. “Everyone must reduce expenses whenever and wherever possible,” warned a March memo instructing supervisors to cut positions and defer staff training requests. State employees, it further admonished, would have to “reduce their use of supplies.”

The Bush administration was hard on State from the start. The number of overseas postings where diplomats cannot bring their families has more than quadrupled, from 200 in 2001 to 905 today. . . . [Diplomats] are entering war zones unprepared, with just a few weeks of training for a Baghdad posting; four decades ago, Vietnam-bound diplomats got six months of preparation, which included combat training. . . . “They are shifting bodies,” says one congressional staffer, “but they aren’t backing that up with more money.”

Further straining the capacity of State are two more recent developments — the war in Iraq, which has caused an exponential growth in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and thus an extraordinarily lopsided level of funding for its operations; and the rapid growth of Diplomatic Security operations as a result of the 1998 Embassy bombings, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These two challenges have conspired to place greater strain on other parts of the building, making it harder for essential bureaus to do their jobs.

This toxic combination of increased responsibilities, declining resources, and shortages in qualified foreign service officers are beginning to take their toll, and not merely in terms of declining numbers:

John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said the statistics painted a disturbing picture. He said 12 percent of overseas Foreign Service positions are currently vacant, and 19 percent of positions that are filled are held by employees who do not have the qualifications required for their jobs. That experience gap is pronounced particularly in language-designated positions: Naland cited a 2006 Government Accountability Office study that found that 29 percent of diplomats in those positions did not meet the language requirements of their jobs. He said AFSA’s research suggested that less than 20 percent of Foreign Service officers had negotiation training. “Imagine if only 20 percent of Army officers had been trained to fire a weapon,” he said.

The state of State is a hidden crisis, one that the next President must address urgently.

Nightly Political Haikus

Can’t write more haikus
Suspending my poetry
Except ones below

;

Surrogates appear
Campaign is not suspended!
Boy I sure fooled you

;

Had to speak today
Don’t want to let Clinton down
Since he endorsed me.

;

No debate! No! Please!
McCain’s freaking out again.
He’s a maverick!

;

Bailout deal is done!
Protected Wall Street.
Screwed Main Street again.

A Crisis in Confidence, Not Liquidity

Three observations about the current mess.

1. Last night, Bush looked scared, lost, and out of place. As my wife Molly put it, he was reading words put into his mouth rather than expressing his own thought. For all our mocking of Al Gore as Mr. Roboto eight years ago, no President has ever looked as wooden as Bush did last night.

But it was not merely a question of performance. Bush looked small — a sad little man out of his depth, more Willy Loman than Atticus Finch. It was a pathetic exercise in ass-covering and special pleading. Where others have risen to an occasion, Bush sank into the depths of his own failure.

2. It is easy to regard our current mess as a question of insufficient liquidity. Although the past two weeks’ event are clearly the product of the current Administration’s disastrous economic policies, what we’re really facing is a crisis in confidence. That’s why the Paulson-Bernanke decision to turn this into one of the biggest crises in American history was so devastating: it created the conditions for a collapse of confidence in the American economy.

If bankers continued to believe the economy was sound, they would lend. If foreign investors still thought the United States as a good place to put their money, the failure of a few large firms would do no more harm to our economic prospects than the Chrysler bailout, the collapse of the savings and loan industry, or the Enron meltdown did.

Credit isn’t drying up because there’s no money; it’s disappearing because people are afraid — scared to lend, scared to buy, scared to do much of anything at all. In the end, the Paulson plan (or the Dodd plan or any other proposal for that matter) will succeed or fail not because it pumps money into the system, but because it restores confidence.

What is required of leaders in times like this is not merely policy prescriptions, but also reassurance. Think about 9/11. For all we may despise him now, Rudy Giuliani — not Bush, I would note — demonstrated that kind of leadership. For about a week, Giuliani became almost a second President, offering Americans the comforting words they so longed to hear — words that Bush, whether unwilling or unable, never himself got around to saying.

In the current crisis, we have yet to see anyone play a similar role. Bush has been a disaster. McCain’s abrupt decision to “suspend” his campaign looked more like political panic than economic stewardship. Obama has been so cool, calm and collected that he looks detached. Paulson and Bernanke have turned into the Panic Twins, and no one in Congress has stepped to the plate.

3. I could not help contrasting Bush’s speech last night with one delivered during an even greater crisis. On March 4, 1932 (the official date of Inauguration Day had not yet been moved to January), Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his First Inaugural Address, three years after the Great Crash of 1929 had plunged the United States into the Great Depression. It was a desperate time, far worse than what we face now (at least as of now), the country teetering on the edge of chaos, despair, and the collapse of democratic government.

In response, Roosevelt gave what is one of the greatest inaugural speeches in American history (surpassed, perhaps, only by Lincoln’s Second), helping to calm American fears and start the long hard road back to prosperity — a process that lasted until the end of the Second World War, nearly sixteen years after the Great Crash.

Despite the fact that it would take over a decade for the United States to recover fully, Roosevelt’s speech that day was a turning point, if not in terms of economic growth, then in terms of Americans’ willingness to bear down and try to fix what was ailing the country — and in terms of saving our democratic form of government.

In this environment of fear and political posturing, I think it would be useful to recall what real leadership looks like. The following are excerpts; you can read the entire speech here.

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. . . . Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. . . .The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. . . .

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. . . .

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

So how about it Senator Obama? If John McCain does not show up tomorrow night, it’s your chance to give a speech that could reassure the nation, one that would match if not surpasses the best you’ve given in the past. It might do more to restore confidence than anything that’s happening in Washington.

And if that isn’t enough incentive, it also just might win the election for you.

Live Blogging Dubya on the Bailout

I really don’t want to do this. I’d rather be kicked in the head.

9:02 “Our entire economy is in danger.” And whose fault is that?

9:03 Apparently it’s all about jobs and Americans getting credit

9:03 Bush appears nervous.

9:04 “How did our economy reach this point?” Uh, because you’ve been President for the past eight years. Apparently he’s blaming it on foreigners liking to invest in the United States. Silly foreigners. Too much easy credit led to excesses and bad decisions. Now it’s the lenders fault. Now it’s borrowers fault.

NO NO NO. IT’S YOUR FREAKING FAULT YOU JERK. YOU AND YOUR GANG OF IDIOTS. I can’t take much more of this — I just want to scream at the screen.

9:05 Having Bush explain economics is like having Hu Jintao explain human rights.

9:06 You know, when Bush addressed Congress after 9/11, he demonstrated courage and leadership. He stepped beyond politics and acted like a President. Compare that performance to this one. This isn’t about leadership: it’s all about covering his ass and that of his cronies.

9:07 Oh, it was his decision to intervene? Where has he been for the past week? It was the Ben and Hank show.

9:08 Good to know his capitalist principles are intact at the very moment he’s having the government buy a trillion dollars of crappy mortgages and other bad debt.

9:08 Molly just asked a good question: “Why do I get the sense he’s reading without understanding what he’s reading?”

9:08 “It is difficult to pass a bill that commits so much of taxpayers money.” Uh, could that be because it’s a horribly bad bill?

9:09 Molly says she prefers robot Bush to real Bush — he doesn’t get under her skin as much.

9:10 He outlined something closer to the Dodd plan than the Paulson plan, then said he had introduced the Paulson plan. Does he have any idea what he’s saying. And what’s making that scraping noise?

9:11 He asks how this is going to affect our future at 9:11 pm. Oh the irony.

9:12 I’ll say it again. He looks scared to death.

9:12 McCain talking point: 21st Century financial system governed by outdated 20th Century laws.

9:12 He’s really talking up Paulson.

9:13 Heh — Democratic capitalism — yep, that’s exactly what we need you sad sick excuse for a leader.

9:13 Blame it on partisanship. Of course. “In times of trial,” we have real leaders. No we don’t — we have him.

Okay, that was absolutely nothing new. No leadership, no new ideas, no reassurance. He wasn’t presidential — and he has failed this country tonight just as he has over the past seven years. As Chris Dodd just said on MSNBC, bad behavior and predatory lending that was left unchecked by federal regulators for far too long. The Administration didn’t do its job and now we’re paying the price.

Bailout: Fear and Loathing in the Halls of Congress

Matt Yglesias on the cowardly decision by Congressional Democrats to support any bailout only if Republicans go along:

May I just observe that it’s distressing to see the news reports — and even worse, the rumors and gossip in DC — that have Democratic legislative leaders putting their primary emphasis on making sure that there are enough Republican votes for a bailout package to provide adequate political cover. Not only is it a mistake to put a primary emphasis on politics rather than on the merits of the bill, but focusing on trying to make sure that the Republicans don’t stick Democrats with the blame for a bailout guarantees a bad bill. . . .

[Democrats should] make Bush and the Senate Republicans choose between allowing a good bill to become law, or blocking a proposal that would prevent a financial meltdown. If they want to block a good bill and then pass a bad one with Republican votes and a handful of moderate Democrats, let that happen. Or if they want to let Democrats pass a good bill, let that happen. But why pass a bad bipartisan bill? And what makes you think you could get a good bipartisan bill? It doesn’t make sense. Congress shouldn’t be looking for “cover” for embarrassing votes; members should be casting votes they’re prepared to defend on the merits.

This is the problem with being a Democrat. As much as I admire Barack Obama and about 15-20 Members of Congress, the rest of our Representatives, particularly in the House, are a bunch of spineless scaredy-cat scum-sucking surrender weasels. They rolled over on Iraq, they rolled over on the Patriot Act, they rolled over on FISA, they rolled over on Alberto Gonzales — they’ve rolled over on everything.

If I were Barack Obama, I would make replacing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid one of my top priorities should I get elected. Yes, I know it doesn’t work that way, and yes, I know that Congress gets angry when the President starts trying to mess around with Congress’s prerogative to choose its own leadership, but this is freaking ridiculous. We can do better.

Here’s a brief list of some of the Democrats whose spines would make them better Majority Leaders in the Senate, in rough order of my preference:

Barbara Boxer (CA)
Russ Feingold (WI)
Jon Tester (WY)
Jim Webb (VA)
Amy Klobuchar (MN)
Patrick Leahy (VT)

Pick one of these folks and you change the game in the Senate. And notice that I’m not including Hillary, Schumer, Dodd, Kerry, or Durban on this list. Perhaps Hillary could do the job, but I can’t help feeling that she would be part of the problem as well — and try to dictate Obama’s agenda.

Where is Hunter S. Thompson when we need him?

So who should we choose for the House? My instinct is Rahm Emmanuel, but part of me is convinced that even with a strong spine, he would be too poisonous. Jim Clyburn? Marcy Kaptur? There has to be somebody out there who knows how to run things and has the guts to make things happen.

Anyone?

Bueller?

Sigh.

Image: Wikipedia, using a GNU Free Documentation License

Thought for the Day

I appreciate Congress’s skepticism on the bailout plan, and I’m glad that there appears to be considerable bipartisan skepticism regarding the speed demanded by the Administration.

But where were these guys before this week? They — Democrats and Republicans — are as culpable as the Administration.

The Bailout Bill: A Threat to Constitutional Rule

By now my fellow bloggers have spilled plenty of bytes on the serious problems with the Administration’s bailout proposal. I have nothing new to add to that discussion, but I do want to some thoughts on one provision of the bill that many people have overlooked.

If the current bailout proposal passes unamended, Congress will have just given Henry Paulson a degree of power that no Cabinet Secretary — or President for that matter — has ever had. This is Section 8 of the bill as it now stands:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This language represents nothing less than the institutionalization of the Cheney-Addington concept of an all-powerful, unitary executive that cannot be checked by either Congress or the courts. It would represent the single greatest expansion of Presidential power in American history. As written, not even the Supreme Court would have the authority to overturn it as unconstitutional:

As Congress prepares to act speedily on the grant of power to the Treasury Secretary to buy up $700 billion worth of bundles of bad mortage loans, the Supreme Court may watch in fascination, but it would have no power to second-guess the “bailout,” if enacted. Given the sweep of the authority that would go to the Secretary, it might raise some constitutional questions. But there would be no way to test those in court.

According to press accounts, when Barnake and Paulson went up to Capitol Hill to brief Congressional leaders last week, they painted a terrifying portrait of economic collapse. They warned lawmakers warned that we are teetering on the edge of a precipice, and that Congress needed to take urgent action to prevent a disaster. Congressional leaders emerged from the meeting looking like they had been hit by a bus.

Sound familiar? The Bush Administration used similar language to convince Congress to pass post-9/11 restrictions on civil liberties (most notably the Patriot Act); to authorize the invasion of Iraq; and to adopt both the Military Commissions Act (including the provision exempting CIA agents from laws banning torture) and the recent FISA bill.

To put it another way, every time this Administration has convinced Congress to adopt laws that expand executive power or erode civil liberties, it has scared Congress into going along it. This time the threat is not terrorism but economic collapse. But don’t kid yourself: Section 8 could mark the beginning of the end of the separation of powers and the rule of law.

To me, all the other questions about this highly problematic bill pale in comparison. Congress must not agree to this bill as long as Section 8 remains. If it does, it might as well pack up and go home.

Reindeer Games: Bush, Human Rights, and China

I know I’m a little behind on this, but I just read in the papertubes that Dubya gave a speech about human rights in China . And that the ChiComs are not happy about it.

My first instinct was to applaud him for speaking out. After his appearance before the foreign press last week, during which he set a new personal record for inanity, obsequiousness, and malapropisms, I was sure that he would be so busy begging Hu “Is Lying Now” Jintao not to liquidate China’s dollar holdings that he wouldn’t dare talk about human rights or democracy. So reports that he did, and that the Chinese got mad as a result, came as a pleasant surprise.

Then I read the speech.

The first thing I noticed was that he gave it in Thailand. Not at the Embassy dedication in Beijing, not during his visit to the Olympics, but in Bangkok. He might as well have given it in Timbuktu.

The second I noticed was that he does not mention human rights in China until the twenty-sixth paragraph — out of twenty-nine total. It comes only after he’s praised the Chinese for their economic achievements, highlighted their role in the six-party talks on North Korea, begged them not to foreclose on our economy, and reiterated America’s belief in a “one China” policy.

It also comes after he wishes the Queen of Thailand a happy birthday, praises the economic achievments of Thailand and other countries in the region, invokes the threat of terrorism, discusses North Korea, and gives a shout out to his wife for her work on Burma. (That’s right, of all the people working on Burma in this world, he chose to praise Laura.)

The actual criticism takes up two paragraphs of twenty-nine. They look almost like an afterthought. And they include the following sentence:

Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions.

I just ran that little gem through the Diplospeak Translator, and this is what came out:

DIPLOSPEAK TRANSLATOR: We’re not really serious about this, but Congress and those whiny human rights organizations back home will kick my butt for the rest of my term if I don’t pretend to care. Please please please please don’t be mad at me.

What nonsense. And the ChiComs got in a lather over this? Here’s what the Foreign Ministry said in response:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang admonished Bush, saying “We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.” He also said the Chinese government is dedicated to promoting basic rights, and that “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion.These are indisputable facts.”

This isn’t foreign policy. It’s Chinese Opera. I don’t know which I find more distressing.

The fact that the White House is spinning this as courage;
The fact that the Chinese have gotten their collective Communist capitalist noses out of joint for such innocuous language; or
That the Western media bought the whole thing as a real controversy.

The games have started, Bush will forget about his admonition, the Chinese will welcome him, and everyone will enjoy the spectacle and the athleticism. Nothing else will happen.

There’s a term my summer camp friends used to have for such hypocrisy: Reindeer Games, which we defined as pretending to care about something when you really didn’t give a damn what happened. I think that pretty much summarizes the situation here. All posturing, no content.

Beyond November: Lora Lumpe

The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition. As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President. They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Lora Lumpe. The series will then resume next week and appear weekly from now to the convention. Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz over at the Connect U.S. Fund for making the cross-postings happen.

One of the most urgent foreign policy priorities for the next administration is to take on the MIPC.

That’s not a new South American Maoist group. Nor is it a fast spreading virus from Asia. It’s President/General Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial-Complex, 50 years later and fully integrated into the political life of the nation.

Why would the next President want to touch that, you ask?! Well, because there is near unanimity among America’s foreign policy thinkers of both parties that we have got to build up the atrophied non-military components of U.S. foreign policy-namely diplomacy and development. The U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (which includes not only the development and humanitarian biggies, but also Boeing and LockMar), Secretary Gates, Chairman Mullen, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden and Ranking Republican Dick Lugar all agree.

I work for a Quaker lobby group, and we are definitely down with that! We are all about preventing deadly conflict, and in fact we have had two full time lobbyists wandering the halls of Capitol Hill for the past 5 years trying to sell the idea that it’s cheaper-and better policy-to have adequate numbers of superbly trained diplomats and a cadre of technically skilled development specialists than it is to have wars.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department’s own recent estimate, there are still more than 1,500 diplomatic positions currently unfilled, and a vacancy rate of more than 13% in our embassies around the world. At the same time, the DOD has issued directives and is moving forward with plans to enable it to carry out even more development functions, as a hedge against the (quite likely) inability of State Department to garner adequate resources from Congress to do the development jobs that need doing.*

But, as long as politics are in play, Members of Congress-9 times out of 10-are going to respond to pressures to give the Pentagon pretty much whatever it wants, in order to maintain bases, manufacturing jobs, etc. in state or in district. They face zero negative political impact if they vote against funding State Department “bureaucrats” or “wasteful and inefficient” development programs.

Until the development and diplomatic community disperse across the country and can create political pressure (ie, jobs) in 435 Congressional districts-or at least in a dozen or so states-they will always be at a disadvantage when it comes time for Congress to vote on
the annual appropriations bills.

Relatedly, when I lobby on the Hill, I very often meet with military legislative aides who are “Fellows” on loan from one of the military services. One such, an Air Force Fellow, told me that the USAF alone had 41 Fellows on the Hill this year, so there are probably nearly 200 in all. These folks will return to the Pentagon and work “Leg. Affairs”-and do so with great savvy and with loads of personal connections. The result-of both the Fellows’ training and the dispersed jobs and military bases is that the DOD is the most effective lobby in town, bar none.

In the State Department, by comparison, Legislative Affairs is viewed as somewhere near the seventh circle, middle ring of the Inferno. While there are a few offices and individuals who are quite effective at using the media and/or Hill contacts, in general State Department is woeful at advocating and advancing its legislative goals.

The next President needs to direct the State Department to study the Pentagon’s skillful approach, but he is also going to have to expend a good deal of political capital to persuade folks on Capitol Hill that they should ignore pork barrel prerogatives in favor of the good of the nation and the world and fully fund the diplomatic and development corps that everyone agrees we have let go to seed.

The second imperative for the next administration, in order for the republic to have a healthy-or healthier-foreign policy, is for the admin to encourage Congress to take back more power. While it may seem paradoxical-even unlikely-that the admin should or would urge the Congress to exercise its prerogatives more fully, it is imperative that Congress get back into the practice of oversight.

During the past decade, you can count on half of one hand the Committees of Congress-House or Senate-that engaged in oversight of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the body has largely become a rubberstamp-especially for the military aspects of foreign policy-which, as outlined below, encompass many previously civilian-led functions, like development, democracy-building, etc.

The breakdown in oversight is related to the extreme partisan politics that has befallen the Capitol, but also to the infatuation that the U.S. public and policy world have with all things military. The “can do” attitude of the military is mythologized, while billions in waste, fraud, and abuse are overlooked and the Pentagon is given more and more authorities with little or no examination of costs, benefits, or counterproductive repercussions.

Most Congressional committees gutted their investigations staffs in the late 1990s, as inquiries like Iran-Contra, BICC and others were considered pesky and partisan. Oversight became, if not a dirty word at least a forgotten art, and external groups, like the Project on Government Oversight, now hold seminars for congressional staff who are
interested in learning how to do oversight….

While difficult to enact these changes, it will be impossible to revitalize America’s foreign policy tool kit without taking on these deeply rooted institutional and political problems.

————————-
*DOD Directive 3000.05 of 28 November 2005 states that some of the DOD’s core tasks, as part of its new “stability operations” mandate” include:
4.3.1. Rebuild indigenous institutions including various types of security forces, correctional facilities, and judicial systems necessary to secure and stabilize the environment;
4.3.2. Revive or rebuild the private sector, including encouraging citizen-driven, bottom-up economic activity and constructing necessary infrastructure; and
4.3.3. Develop representative governmental institutions.”

As FCNL’s Legislative Representative for Conventional Weapons, Lora Lumpe lobbies and campaigns for more responsible U.S. arms export policies—including a ban on U.S. use and export of cluster bombs and anti-personnel landmines. She coordinates the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines on behalf of FCNL and represents FCNL on the steering committee of the global campaign to achieve a universal Arms Trade Treaty.
Before joining FCNL’s staff in September 2007, Lora served for six years as a consultant for Amnesty International USA. She also worked as a consultant in recent years for the Open Society Institute, Small Arms Survey, the United Nations, AFSC, Swiss Government, and numerous other organizations.

Harumph

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