For What It's Worth

Experience. The cornerstone of the McCain campaign (or at least the first part of his campaign until his pollsters reassessed the national mood and decided they would be better off trying to steal "Change.") It seems now that the McCain camp has accepted defeat in the war over the "change" slogan (though for a 72 year old guy with essentially the same policy proposals as his own incumbent party, the fact that he even tried to hijack that slogan is impressive). In the past few weeks McCain seems to have remembered how much he loves experience, and considering how close we are to election day it seems that McCain's game of "musical slogans" may have landed him firmly back where he started.

This seemed to be true in the last debate, when McCain tried to paint Obama as a dangerous unknown, saying that the presidency isn't suited for someone who needs "on the job training." Instead, we need someone who's been there, he says, someone with experience.

It's true, experience is an important quality. No one would disagree with that. But is it the be-all end-all that John McCain asserts it is? I think it is fair to say that the person with the most experience at being president right now is our very own George W. In fact, he's the only one who has any experience in being president in the 21st century. Does that mean we would want him calling the shots for another 4 years?

So how do we know what experience is worth? Is there a formula where we can plug in a candidate's age, years of service, and number of bills introduced, and get something like a credit score before we decide to loan them the country for four years? If so, Palin is certainly sub-prime. But, alas, it's not that easy. It seems we need to look elsewhere if we are to find the worth of a person's experience and how that will translate to their effectiveness in a new position.

I guess the general theory is that experience gives a person a large bank of knowledge to call upon in facing new problems. As the saying goes, "history repeats itself," and the idea seems to be that those who have seen more in their time are in a better position to react to future challenges by recalling effective strategies of the past.

I can agree with this to some extent. But the problem I see with this notion that experience and judgement comes only with age is this: just because someone lived through a certain point in history doesn't mean that they have a sound understanding of the dynamics of a particular situation that took place during that era. This point became incredibly clear to me in Tuesday night's presidential debate.

McCain and Obama were discussing foreign policy, particularly the challenges we face in Afghanistan. I couldn't believe what I was hearing when McCain began "educating" the public with a brief overview on how extremism was allowed to prosper in Afghanistan in the first place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ibsDF9Dqs&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_813830 

To see a candidate who has portrayed himself as a foreign policy expert, someone with experience, display such a fundamentally wrong understanding of one of the most important and far-reaching international events of the past century was astounding to me. For someone who just minutes before had declared Ronald Reagan his personal hero, you would think McCain may have payed a bit more attention during Reagan's time in office.

To those who were paying attention (or anyone who has been so bold a to read a history book) McCain's perception of the situation is frighteningly simplistic and plainly false. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a sort of Vietnam-like conflict for them, in that they spent years trying to gain control over the territory and were eventually forced to withdraw after massive amounts of casualties. Of course, the US saw this war as an opportunity to inflict the Soviets with a huge military defeat, and so we began funneling large sums of money to Afghan "Freedom Fighters" (The name is a matter of perspective. The Soviets called them terrorists. The fact is that they were a band of warriors fighting a jihad against the Soviet Union. They were led by warlords and destroyed infrastructure, launched rocket attacks, planted mines, etc. often at the cost of civilian lives.) Eventually, these "freedom fighters" were successful in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

At this point, McCain seems to think that the freedom-loving warriors we trained and funded just vanished into thin air, while evil terrorists like Al Qaeda and the Taliban moved in to take their place. The obvious point that McCain doesn't seem to understand (to use his common criticism of Obama) is that the many of the warlords responsible for instituting Taliban rule and Islamic extremism were the very same men we had funded to drive out the Soviets. In fact, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar--the warlord who received the most US funding during the conflict (40%)-- is now wanted for war crimes and terrorist acts involving the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Nobody left Afghanistan, and it's not like the extremists appeared overnight. The only shift occurred in their feeling towards us--and it was not a favorable change.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulbuddin_Hekmatyar#Role_in_the_anti-Soviet_resistance

I certainly agree that experience is an important factor in choosing a president. However, it does us no good to elect people who have huge misconceptions about the way the world works, no matter how long they may have been serving the country. Experience is only valuable if it helps you make more informed decisions on the basis of prior knowledge. On Tuesday night John McCain showed us that, at least on Afghanistan, his experience isn't worth much.

Oh, Sarah: A Few Random Thoughts

I imagine I'm not the only one who is tired of hearing about Sarah Palin. Truthfully, I don't care whether she's a pig with lipstick or a moose with a wig. Maybe Hillary Clinton would like to explain some things about sexism to Mr. McCain, Mr. Schmidt, and their friends.

I'm glad that McCain is being challenged on all the false claims he made lately on earmarks, sexism, and sex education (he really got trashed on "The View"). Nevertheless, it's saddening to see the media busy dealing with this nonsense, even if it is to be expected. And of course, when the McCain campaign screws up with their lies, they inevitably blame it on the media and somehow manage to get away with it, and then it's on to the next round of untruths (however doubleplusungood they may be).

Sarah Palin's foreign policy interview with Charlie Gibson was certainly enough to give us politicos a chuckle and make us shake our heads, but I'm not sure that it will be enough to really scare undecided voters. Ok, so one is expecting her to have personal relationships with world leaders like Joe Biden does, but it isn't odd to expect for a woman who could become president to know the basics of the last 8 years of US foreign policy (even though I wish that we had never heard of the Bush Doctrine). However, while this definitely gives Obama's campaign something to work with, I truthfully think that her shoddy interview performance won't be enough to shift people's opinions by itself (after all, many undecided voters probably couldn't care less about the Bush Doctrine). The thought of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency hasn't scared voters so far, and it won't likely make enough of a difference until we get to the vice-presidential debates. If Joe Biden can make her look foolish on foreign policy, there might be a narrative to work with.

However, even her approval ratings start to slide, it doesn't make sense for Democrats to be distracted by the Palin circus. Instead, I'd really like to see more noise about the Interior Department scandal. Foreign policy doctrines are hard to understand; that's not the case with sex and drugs. Seriously, sleeping with the oil industry? Campaign advertising strategists should be salivating at the thought of the possibilities. Obama has spent the last months reminding people that McCain means more the same; it's time to remind people why that wouldn't be a good thing. If Obama forgets Mrs. Palin and turns this election into a referendum on the Republican Party (however hard it may be to do, consider how hard McCain is fighting to avoid it), then New Hampshire won't need us, and President Obama will be able to enter office with a comfortable mandate. Moreover, it would have the added effect of helping down-ticket races trying to run against the Republican Party.

Grand Strategery

For those of you interested in the future of the military and the long-term picture of what we should do beyond Iraq, some influential military strategists testified before Congress last week. There's a quick summary of what they said here.

For the record, I'm a fan of Krepinevich. I suppose the fact that he wrote some of required Vietnam reading for my War and Politics class played some role in that. I've also had a chance to meet with Larry Korb. Great guy.

Taiwan and Chechnya

Russia invaded Chechnya, a breakaway republic which Russia claimed as part of its contiguous nation, after Chechnya declared independence on the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US did not intervene militarily to stop this (we made some diplomatic flutters about the harshness of the original 2 year campaign and of the ongoing, since 1999, campaign).

If China invaded Taiwan to bring it back under central PRC control, how would this be fundamentally different?

I know that Taiwan has claimed de jure control of China, but it has given up on that claim. Also, while Taiwan has de facto independence, so did Chechnya prior to the second invasion.

I am not claiming the situations are the same or necessarily similar. I just do not have enough understanding of the two situations to declare whether they are different or similar.

I would love to hear why they are different. If they are not, why did we not intervene in Chechnya and/or why should we intervene in Taiwan?

(Please come to the Dems-HRC debate on American foreign policy toward China this Saturday!)

What To Do In Iraq and Iran

While Andrew’s post (which is below mine on the blog) was very well thought out and undeniably hilarious (something which I will not attempt), I think he is fundamentally wrong about what we should do in the Middle East. His plan is wrong not just for the Democratic Party but for America.

I think we need to take a tough stance against Iran not because we as Democrats need to overcompensate on national security but because they are a dictatorship which has threatened its neighbors and has sponsored terrorism, endangering our country. Furthermore, they do not respect human rights and their leaders are resistant to democratic change.

I am going to explain why a tough stance will not lead to the crazy scenario Andrew laid out. But first I just wanted to make it clear that while I agree the United States should not remove any options from the table (in the event Iran started shooting missiles, especially nuclear ones, at its neighbors), I do not think invading Iran is an acceptable route if anything short of military aggression by Iran takes place.

Now, I will explain why Andrew's hilarious albeit illogical premise is wrong and why doing what I (and the Democratic Party) urges would not lead to an Iranian dominated Middle East.

Read more »

Live-blogging Khatami at Harvard

I'm here, with Jill, on the ground floor of the Institute of Politics. We're supposedly 3 minutes away from Khatami's speech, which I'll be live-blogging in comments below. This is probably a good time to plug the statement that the Harvard College Democrats released. Also, this is a good time to mention that the opinions below are solely those of the author(s) and not of the Harvard Dems. And away we go....