The LA Times’ Doyle McManus has a curious piece yesterday, noting that foreign policy is already dominating the 2008 presidential race more than any campaign in the post-Cold War era. That’s the good news. The bad news is, McManus’ analysis doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It’s easy to tell the difference between the two parties on foreign policy in this presidential campaign. The Democrats all want to talk about getting out of Iraq, but not so much about Al Qaeda or terrorism. The Republicans all want to talk about terrorism, but not so much about Iraq.
Although fireworks erupted last week among the leading Democratic candidates, those differences are narrow compared with the chasm between the two parties’ worldviews, one focused on battling the threat of radical Islam, the other on ending the war.
The problem each party faces, polls show, is that most Americans want answers to both questions, not just one or the other.
Now, if the point is that some Republican candidates will go to almost comical lengths to avoid discussing Iraq policy, McManus might have a point. But that’s not really what he’s getting at here.
His argument is that the GOP finds it politically advantageous to avoid talking about Iraq, while Dems find it politically advantageous to avoid talking about a broader counter-terrorism campaign. There are at least two major flaws to this.
First, as Matt Yglesias explains, “The point, of course, is that ending the war in Iraq isn’t something contrary to improving the country’s ability to reduce its vulnerability to terrorism, nor is it something other than improving the country’s ability to reduce its vulnerability to terrorism, rather, it’s a constitutive part of improving the country’s ability to reduce its vulnerability to terrorism.”
And second, I think McManus is simply mistaken about the Dems’ rhetorical emphasis. The leading candidates seem to be going out of their way to, to borrow McManus’ phrase, “answer both questions.”
Consider this quote, for example, from Barack Obama during a recent debate:
“[W]e live in a more dangerous world, not a less dangerous world, partly as a consequence of this president’s actions, primarily because of this war in Iraq…. What we’ve seen is a distraction from the battles that deal with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We have created an entire new recruitment network in Iraq, that we’re seeing them send folks to Lebanon and Jordan and other areas of the region. And so one of the things that I think is critical, as the next president, is to make absolutely certain that we not only phase out the Iraq but we also focus on the critical battle that we have in Afghanistan and root out al Qaeda.”
Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd all had similar assessments, but according to the LA Times piece, Dems are reluctant to talk about al Qaeda or terrorism.
McManus is right that Republican candidates are anxious to avoid discussions about the war in Iraq, but he seems anxious to cast a pox on both houses. In this case, only one deserves it.