Obama, McCain, and foreign policy
One of the things that was particularly striking about Prez Debate #2 is the continued role-reversal on Pakistan. Obama wants to get in there and take out Bin Laden; McCain says he’s an idiot for saying that. To be fair, the positions are a little more nuanced than that: Obama is saying he’ll pull the trigger if the Pakistani govt won’t, whereas McCain clearly reserves for himself the right to do whatever he wants without telling Pakistan anything in advance (parse his objections, and it’s pretty clear that what he’s really reacting to is Obama being indiscreet enough to talk about secret wars on national TV).
Nonetheless, it’s the mirror-image of what we’re used to seeing. But Obama knows what happens to Democrats who fail to act tough on foreign policy, particularly in the Age of Terror, and he’s determined to match/raise McCain’s rhetoric wherever possible—a stance that could become problematic as the growing financial crisis opens up a gap between where the American public want to intervene (i.e., everywhere) and where we’re actually capable of intervening (a lot fewer places). Right now we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the possibility of expanding operations into Iran and Pakistan, either of which would vault us into a whole new level of commitment.
And then there’s Russia. McCain’s condemnation of her actions in Georgia makes it impossible for Obama to say anything else, but as I’ve noted before, it would be sheer insanity to go to the mat with Russia over anything in the Caucasus. And yet amidst all the rhetoric, one gets a pretty precise sense of what the candidates clearly believe the American electorate wants to hear. Tuesday night neither man had the balls to tell the American people that the economy’s on its way to the shitter; there’s no reason to be surprised that they’re not about to mention that the country’s days of policing the world are over. Everybody’s just going to find that one out the hard way.
