Limits and Possibilities

It occurs to me that yesterday's post on the politics of foreign policy to some extent invites a reading as a "pundit's fallacy" type argument in which I'm saying that if only politicians adopted my policy preferences they'd be more successful. I don't actually believe that. There are plenty of things I think would be a good idea that would be hard to sell politically. Cutting the defense budget as proposed here, for example, is probably asking for a world of trouble. Similarly, a practical politician probably shouldn't talk about the "enduring legacy of imperialism" or whatever else.

Nevertheless, there's no sign that in August of 2000 the American people were crying out for a policy of routine torture, indefinite detention without trial, preventive war, and escalating hostilities with countries all around the world. Someone who started proposing that stuff would have been dismissed as a lunatic. What changed, obviously, was 9/11 happened. But even then there wasn't some immediate and obvious grassroots surge of belief in the idea that Baathist Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda through the mysterious ether of "Muslim totalitarianism" or that Iran is the locus of an "Islamofascist" movement that is the root cause of the attack.

Rather, 9/11 was a shock to the political system that created an opening for Bush and his allies to implement a number of policies along with a broad superstructure of ideas to support them. In the intervening years, however, Bush has become unpopular. And he hasn't become unpopular by coincidence, he's become unpopular largely because people don't like the consequences of the post-9/11 policies he's implemented. Under the circumstances, I think one ought to have a presumption that if there's some new bad idea that Bush implemented in the wake of 9/11 that it's probably possible to mount a persuasive argument against it. The trouble is that in the short-run, it's usually easy to just accept the existing super-structure of ideas and try to conduct politics from inside it. That, though, is hard to do effectively. It would be better to take a little time to explicitly spell out for people the notion that all this bad stuff in the world doesn't just keep happening by coincidence that, rather, it all falls out from wrongheaded big picture ideas that need to be replaced by the different big picture ideas of the American internationalist tradition.

Comments

I'm rather surprised nobody has commented on this yet. Your suggestion sounds like a simple, excellent idea to me. Simply point out that, hey, there are different ways to look at the world and what our place in it should be, we've tried an extremely aggressive and bull-headed approach under Bush, IT HASN'T BEEN WORKING, let's try a different approach!

Posted by Just Another Greg | November 6, 2007 9:39 AM

in the short-run, it's usually easy to just accept the existing super-structure of ideas and try to conduct politics from inside it....It would be better to take a little time to explicitly spell out for people the notion that all this bad stuff in the world..falls out from wrongheaded big picture ideas

True with the politics of terrorism; just as true with general US politics in the last 25 years. Edwards/Obama '08. Just do it.

Posted by jonnybutter | November 6, 2007 9:40 AM

To my usual response to the proposal that the American people get hip to the logic of multilateralism and the attractions of internationalism (would that it were so--but, sadly, such arguments don't include super action figures, sweet revenge, or other essential components of your standard Bruce Willis/Arnold Schwartzenegger/Chuck Norris epic), I would add that untold millions of otherwise decent citizens untoxified by the core neocon creed nonetheless still have a vague notion that we are fighting a Muslim Enemy out there who's worse than Godzilla and Mothra combined. Thus the scary/depressing narrow majority for bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. We are still surrounded by darkness, my friends.

Posted by elle loco | November 6, 2007 9:41 AM

Good post.

I think the problem is that the Democrats seem to believe the superstructure is a manifestation of the base. Maybe arguments like yours will persuade them that the base dictates a better superstructure, or to forget their Marxism altogether and just go about putting in good policies.

Posted by d | November 6, 2007 10:01 AM

you've been making this highly accurate point one way or another for a little while now, but what you haven't discussed is why it is that dems can't seem to bring themselves to do it.

d offers one theory.

mine (while not discounting d's) is embodied in your posting about climate change and the wapo need to see everything as bad news for dems: i think we have here some mix of the stockholm syndrome and the battered spouse syndrome.

i'm certainly open to hearing other theories as to why this rather obvious exercise in politics doesn't seem to occur to dems in a position to speak to it....

Posted by howard | November 6, 2007 11:28 AM

The problem with the Yglesias theory is that episodes likee 9/11, the USS Cole, the prior WTC bombing etc. can't be explained as consequences of the Bush Administration's bad acts. So any attempt to persuade people that our global problems stem from the Bush Administration's bad acts, and that reversing all our post-9/11 policies will prevent future 9/11s, will be met with mockery from Republicans and justified disbelief from the general population. Even people who don't pay much attention to politics can see the logical flaw there.

I realize that Yglesias has a broader theory, that our problems stem from the bipartisan, multinational, bad, colonialist and imperialist acts of the United States and western Europe over the two centuries prior to 9/11. As Yglesias (sort of) acknowledges, that's fine for a dorm room conversation, but it's not going to work in a political campaign.

Posted by y81 | November 6, 2007 12:06 PM

y81, that would be more significant if there was a need to "explain" 9/11, but no such need exists (in the political realm), unless you regard "evil" as the "explanation."

what matters is the "response" to 9/11....

Posted by howard | November 6, 2007 1:22 PM

Howard, unless you explain 9/11, you can't credibly promise to prevent repetititions of the event. Now if you want to say that events like that can't be prevented and you don't intend to try, that's fine, but don't expect to be elected on that platform.

Posted by y81 | November 6, 2007 2:56 PM

"The trouble is that in the short-run, it's usually easy to just accept the existing super-structure of ideas and try to conduct politics from inside it."

Which is, of course, what Matt does on a daily basis when he discusses the "centrist" positions of Obama and Clinton and finds them compelling while cringing at the "weirdness" of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

What's wrong with this picture?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 6, 2007 9:52 PM

So, y81, your concept is that 9/11 can't be explained by Bush's bad acts, but that Matt thinks it can be explained by previous bad behavior on the part of the US, but this can't be explained to the voting public because it requires too much explanation for their little Christian pointy heads to absorb.

That about right?

In other words, America is doomed.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Which is why I consider Matt naive most of the time.

What bugs me about Matt is that he can't see that Obama and Clinton aren't even trying to do anything about explaining the situation. They're simply "accepting the existing super-structure of ideas and try to conduct politics from inside it."

And yet this approach produces policy statements from them that seem compelling to him on any given day, even though there is nothing about them that contains any basic change in the way the US goes about foreign policy.

Again, what's wrong with this picture?

Aside from that, however, what CAN be explained to the public - which, as Matt says, already appears to understand this - is that Bush's actions have had uniformly bad results - and that these actions stem from the same approach as the US' previous actions. I don't know that we have to be too specific about those "previous actions" to make the point.

But once that point is made, where do you go? What policy recommendations get made? Well, I don't see either Obama or Clinton or anyone else (except maybe Ron Paul) suggesting any alternative except the sort of "Very Serious Person" gobbledegook that wouldn't be understood by anyone, let alone the public.

And when Ron Paul does suggest something different, something more in line with George Washington's recommendations, Matt considers him "weird".

So the situation doesn't look good for any changes being made.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 6, 2007 10:04 PM