Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a Republican can get away with cutting federal spending on the military, right? Maybe not.
In yesterday’s Democratic presidential debate, host Brian Williams asked each of the candidates to articulate one feature of their respective platforms that would be right but unpopular with the public. Wesley Clark appeared to struggle a bit. He shouldn’t have — he had already articulated a great answer earlier in the debate.
No serious Dem candidate is willing to admit that the U.S. probably spends more than is needed on the military. Even Howard Dean, the so-called straight shooter who isn’t afraid to “tell it like it is” and accept the consequences, has ruled out military spending cuts.
Clark is the exception. His background as a general and a war hero gives him the standing to cut defense spending without fear of GOP attacks on being “soft.”
In Charleston, S.C., earlier this week, Clark admitted that the military budget is probably bloated. “I think we can do some things,” Clark said in reference to budget cuts. He went on to call the Air Force budget “excessive.”
Following up on this point, Clark said early on in yesterday’s DNC debate, “We’re faced with a very serious deficit problem. We need to go back to the top 2 percent and repeal those tax cuts. We need to put all the government spending programs on the table, including the military programs.”
To be sure, Clark isn’t the only Dem candidate willing to admit this; he’s just the only competitive candidate to do so. Carol Mosley Braun and Dennis Kucinich, to their credit, have offered similar assessments, but with all due respect to their campaigns, neither stands a serious chance at winning the nomination.
With this in mind, Clark’s willingness to consider cuts in defense spending is all the more impressive.
Consider, for a moment, just how much money the United States spends on its military. As Slate’s Fred Kaplan recently explained in an excellent article, the U.S. not only spends more than nearly all of our allies and enemies put together, we’re also spending more than in any year since 1952, the peak of the Korean War. This means we’re spending more now than throughout the Cold War, more than during Reagan’s military buildup, more than during JFK’s efforts to close the so-called “missile gap,” and more than during Vietnam.
“[I]n constant 2004 dollars (adjusted for inflation), the U.S. defense budget in 1985, the peak of the Cold War and Ronald Reagan’s rearmament, totaled $453 billion,” Kaplan wrote.” That was $12 billion to $33 billion less than this year’s budget (depending on whether you count reconstruction). In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, the budget amounted to $428 billion. That’s $38 billion to $59 billion below Bush’s request for this year.”
It’s hard to argue reasonably that every penny in the defense budget is entirely necessary, and in fact, needs to grow even larger (as Bush proposes). As Kaplan put it, “These are parlous times, but are they that parlous? Do we really need to be spending quite so much money on the military?”
Yet, despite passionate pleas for balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility, none of the top Democratic candidates — Dean, Kerry, Edwards, Graham, Lieberman, Gephardt — are willing to acknowledge that military budget cuts may be necessary.
It’s not hard to understand why. They believe, probably accurately, that the moment they suggested a trim in defense spending, the GOP would hammer them. These candidates — Dean in particular — are all-too-aware that the public is skeptical about their potential strength as a commander in chief. Calling on defense cuts is a risk their simply unwilling to take.
Clark, meanwhile, doesn’t have that fear. With four stars on each shoulder, he has the kind of credibility that practically dares the Republicans to attack his patriotism or his commitment to the Armed Forces (which Bush and Cheney so carefully avoided).
It’ll be interesting to see if this develops as a campaign issue as time goes on.