With only a couple of months left before the Bush Administration gets indicted leaves office, I was wondering whether Dubya would launch any last-minute foreign policy initiatives.  Doing so would not be unprecedented — eight years ago, Clinton spent a lot of his time trying to secure Middle East peace.

According to Jim Hoagland in this morning’s WaPo, Bush isn’t interested in similar efforts, shooting down a proposal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reach out to Cuba and Iran.

Unlike Hoagland, I think that is a mistake, particularly in the case of Cuba.

Someone (sorry — I can’t find the reference) once said that the best time to open the door to Cuba would be during the second term of a Republican president. The current transition to a new President makes even more sense.  Given the fact that every President since Kennedy has been captive to the electoral influence of Florida’s Cuban exile community, the best way to break the cycle is to take action when there’s little or no impact on politics. And it’s not like the move would hurt Republican prospects — Cuban-American Members of Congress (and the 2012 Republican nominee) could condemn Bush’s decision.

I have no illusions about the Castros — in the early 1990s, I spent a year documenting the Castro regime’s use of psychiatric techniques (such as electro-convulsive therapy) to torture dissidents.  But I share President-elect Obama’s view that the best way to secure change in rogue regimes is through engagement.  The decades-old U.S. policy of isolating Cuba has failed to bring down the Castro regime and has done little to encourage domestic Cuban opposition.  In fact, the current embargo only gives the Castros greater legitimacy in the eyes of average Cubans.

It’s been nearly twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell.  Most Americans — and even most policymakers — no longer think that isolating Cuba makes any sense.  It’s no longer a “Soviet aircraft carrier off the shores of Florida,” and it isn’t even the greatest challenge to American influence in Latin America (that dubious honor now belongs to Hugo Chavez and Venezuela).

Rice’s mistake may have been attempting to move directly to the idea of formally recognizing the Castro regime.  According to Hoagland, Rice sent a team of senior diplomats to explore the that possibility a year ago.  I agree with Hoagland that doing so would have represented moving too quickly and would have severely limited President-elect Obama’s options.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t steps that Bush could take to improve U.S.-Cuban relations.  The first, and least politically costly, would be to end the current rule preventing Cuban-Americans from sending remittances to their Cuban relatives.  Even the Cuban American National Foundation, the most vocal (and politically powerful) advocate of sustaining the embargo, has said it would support the change.

The second would be to seek an agreement with the Castros to permit more extensive cultural exchanges (including journalists).  One of the most effective components of American public diplomacy during the Cold War was a series of exchanges that brought Soviet artists to the United States and sent American artists to tour the Soviet Union.  The program helped give Soviet citizens an entirely different view of life in the United States than what they were seeing in Soviet propaganda.  (The Soviets also recognized the value of such exchanges, and used them for the same purpose.)

The third would be to end the embargo and permit U.S.-Cuban trade.  Allowing the flow of American goods into the country would do much to increase Cuban citizens’ opinion of the United States and end one of the Castro brothers’ most effective arguments against improved relations.

These measures would go a long way toward ending the freeze in Cuban-American relations without undermining the underlying policy — that the Cuban people deserve the opportunity to choose their own government.  It also would do harm to Chavez and others who like to argue that the United States is only interested in advancing its neocolonialist policies.

So why would Bush oppose such efforts, even when they involve no apparent cost?  The answer has nothing to do with Hoagland’s view that any reassessment of Cuban policy should be left to the next Administration and everything to do with politics:  Jeb Bush may still think he can run for President in four years.  Given Dubya’s current unpopularity, that certainly looks like the longest of long shots. But President Bush is unlikely to do anything now that would undermine his brother’s popularity in a key Republican constituency.

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I’ve been holding off commenting on this story until I could hear about the results of the conference call the McCain campaign held this morning in response to this Washington Post article:

[S]ome of [Al-Qaeda's] supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to [their goals].  “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush. . . .

In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting. . .suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.  “It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”

In response, the McCain campaign got foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann and raving right-wingnut ex-CIA director James Woolsey on a call with reporters and bloggers.  Of course, the very fact they were holding a call probably indicates that there’s a problem.  Dave Weigel reports on the results:

Schneuemann and Woolsey attacked the paper for selectiveness and unfairness, listing supportive things said by American enemies like Ghadaffi about Obama that the Post never covered. Plus, according to Woolsey, there’s no way a serious Al-Qaeda blogger could support McCain.

This individual knows that an endorsement by him is a kiss of death, figuratively. He is not trying to help John McCain.

The first question: If this was a bad faith comment meant to hurt McCain, how do we know comments from Ahmedinijad about Obama aren’t meant to hurt the Democrat?   Woolsey:

Any major organization, itself, will not take the risk to depart from the party line.

Okay, let’s dissect this a bit.  If you are to believe the Wingnut Twins, the the Post’s alleged failure to cover past favorable comments by Ghadaffi and Chavez somehow makes their coverage of Al-Qaeda’s commentary on McCain somehow illegitimate.  This defies logic for several reasons.

To begin with, other outlets, including the Associate Press, reported the story as well.

Second, the Post, like every other media outlet, has reported on stories where the McCain campaign (and others) suggested that foreign leaders’ preference for Obama made him unfit for office.  Post columnists like Charles Krauthammer have hammered this home again and again.  And that doesn’t even touch on the mini-controversy caused by the fact that a Hamas spokesman at one point said he would favor Obama.

Third, the standard isn’t whether the Post covered it, but whether the McCain campaign itself thought similar stories were newsworthy.  McCain and his surrogates have hammered Obama on both his “no preconditions” speech and the Hamas story, among others.  The campaign and its stalking horses in the blogosphere have even brought up favorable comments by Obama’s supporters, trying to use his followers’ statement to link him to Chavez, the Castros, Ahmadinejad, and even Che Guevara. Only now, when the tables are turned, is this somehow off limits.

Fourth, what do you think whould have happened if the press reported that al Qaeda actually preferred Obama?  Woolsey and Scheunemann would be frothing at the mouth, and Schmidt and company would have a new ad up saying Osama hearts Obama.

Fifth,  John McCain has repeatedly criticized Obama for expressing a willingness to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to “take out” Osama bin Laden.  It is Obama, not McCain, who has promised to redirect resources currently used in Iraq to win the war in Afghanistan.  It is Obama, not McCain who poses the greater threat to al Qaeda.  So to suggest that this was designed to hurt McCain because he is the bigger threat is to ignore the facts.

Last but not least, the CIA, among others, has noted that Osama bin Laden’s 2004 video, released four days before the Presidential election, played a significant role in pushing a number of undecideds toward Bush — which was exactly the result bin Laden wanted.  If, as Scheunemann and Woolsey would have you believe, al Qaeda fears McCain more than Obama, wouldn’t it make sense that they would avoid taking an action that would tilt the election toward McCain?

The McCain campaign can’t have it both ways.  They can’t argue that other foreign nutjobs’ apparent support for Obama proves he is unworthy to be President and then claim that these nutjobs’ support for McCain proves that he is the bigger threat to terrorism.  You also can’t suggest that al Qaeda’s support for you is fake and that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and others’ support for Obama is sincere.

Oh. Wait.  It’s the McCain campaign.

Inconsistency and double standards are their preferred tools.

Never mind.

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Eight years ago, a journalist asked Dubya if he knew who was the leader of Pakistan.  Bush flubbed it, and the journalist was widely criticized for playing “gotcha.”

Flash forward eight years and it’s John McCain’s turn — except this time it isn’t gotcha, it’s just a candidate who clearly doesn’t know what the hell the reporter is talking about.

Today, McCain did an interview with Union Radio (Cadena Seiz) a Spanish network.  I presume his handlers told him that by “Spanish radio,” he should understand that the interviewer was from Spain, and that he might, just might want to bone up a little on a few things — like the name of Spain’s prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Apparently they didn’t and he didn’t.

According to stories on the websites of El País and Union Radio, the reporter first asked McCain his thoughts on Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Raul Castro.  In each case, McCain made it clear that he would not sit down to meet with any of them, and went out of his way to note that Obama had promised to meet with Chavez.

Then the interviewer asks McCain whether he would meet with Zapatero.  From what I’ve been able to glean (given that I don’t speak Spanish), it was not an attempt to trip McCain up — the reporter merely wants to cover as much territory as possible in the brief time he has.

McCain replies, (and this is a very rough translation based on me running the stories through BabelFish), “I will meet with those leaders who are friendly and who want to work with us cooperatively.”

Uh oh.

The reporter asks again.  McCain says, “I will meet with those leaders who have the same principles and philosophy that we do:  human rights, democracy and liberty.  I will challenge those who do not [have them].”

The reporter asks a third time.  According to a commenter at Obsidian Wings, McCain starts talking about President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and praises him for cooperating with the United States in the war on drugs.

Finally, the interviewer interrupts McCain and says, “Okay, I’m talking about Europe, the prime minister of Spain.  Will you meet with him?”  McCain repeats his earlier statement about working with friends.

Holy Sarah Palin, Batman!  Can McCain see Spain from one of his homes?

One of the more interesting part of this fiasco is that the Spanish press is treating this as a straight story — that McCain dissed Zapatero repeatedly, refusing to commit to a meeting.  Here’s a rough translation of the lede of the El País story:

John McCain, the Republican candidate for the White House, refused on four separate occasions to commit to meet with the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, if [McCain] becomes the next president of the United States.

I think I understand the mistake that the Spanish press is making here:  they’re assuming that McCain has any freaking clue about their country.  They assume that he couldn’t possibly be that stupid.

Here’s my suggestion to the next Spanish language interviewer who wants to ask about U.S.-Spanish relations:  don’t pronounce the prime minister’s name “Za-peh-tey-ro.”  That was your big mistake.

You’ll find that you get a much better answer if you just learn to pronounce it “Sah-kash-vee-lee.”  Next thing you know, McCain will suggest that we’re all Spaniards now and start threatening war with Portugal.

So what should we make of this?  Imagine if this had happened to Obama.  The media would talk about nothing else for a week:  the inexperienced candidate flubs a simple question. In McCain’s case, it’s not yet clear what will happen — except that his campaign will lie about what really happened.

Ultimately there are three possible answers:  he was tired; he was clueless; or he is stupid.  Let’s hope it was the first.

Hat tips:  TPM and Hilzoy at ObWi

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As I’ve noted before, I despise the Castro regime (both its Fidel and Raul editions).  I spent a year in the early 1990s documenting its use of psychiatric institutions to detain and torture human rights advocates and regime critics.  But I also oppose the U.S. embargo — I agree with the position held by many of the brave human rights and democracy activists on the island, who believe that it is one of the few things propping up the current regime.

So I have to say I was not surprised at the following report:

After days of pressure by certain Cuban exile leaders on the Bush Administration to temporarily lift travel and money remittance restrictions to Cuba to aid storm victims, the State Department has finally delivered a response.  The answer is no, the federal government will not lift restrictions that limit Cuban exiles to visiting close relatives in Cuba once every three years and sending up to $300 every three months.

In a statement issued Friday, the office of the State Department spokesman had this to say in direct response to the pleas for lifting restrictions: “We do not believe that at this time it is necessary to loosen the restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba to accomplish the objective of aiding the hurricane victims.Non-governmental organizations on the ground in Cuba are already mobilizing to provide such assistance.”

The issue arose last week when three prominent members of the Cuban exile community, Ramon Saul Sanchez of the Democracy Movement and congressional Democratic Party candidates Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia called on President Bush to lift the restrictions. Then Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama endorsed the exile appeals. A bipartisan group of congressional leaders, four Republicans and three Democrats, issued a separate statement urging the U.S. government to send aid directly to storm victims. The Republicans included the two incumbents Martinez and Garcia are challenging: Lincoln and his brother Mario Diaz-Balart.

So let me get this straight.  The Cuban exile community supports the temporary lifting of the embargo to facilitate the delivery of relief to the victims of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, but the Bush Administration refused — in all likelihood because they’re trying to placate the Cuban exile community.

The ongoing stupidities of this Administration will never cease to amaze me.

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