The Vapidity of American Debates

Americans and their political leaders can have a peculiarly insular view of the world. Candidate debates tend to reflect and emphasize this insularity and often produce vapid, superficial commentary on policy positions that, like so much cotton candy, are sweetness and light and momentarily pleasing. But they rapidly dissipate, leaving behind only a warm and happy and fleeting memory of insubstantiality.
This is bad. Worse, though, is the major print coverage that follows these exercises in unreality. Take, for example, the Democratic debate of January 5, 2008. Here are a few samples from the program to illustrate the point.
Q: Senator Obama . . . it was you who said in your foreign policy speech that you would go into western Pakistan if you had actionable intelligence to go after it [al Qaeda], whether or not the Pakistani government agreed. Do you stand by that?
Obama: I said we should work with the Pakistani government, first of all to encourage democracy in Pakistan so you've got a legitimate government that we're working with, and secondly that we have to press them to do more to take on Al Qaida in their territory. What I said was, if they could not or would not do so, and we had actionable intelligence, then I would strike. And I should add that Lee Hamilton and Tom Keaton, the heads of the 9/11 Commission, a few months later wrote an editorial saying the exact same thing. I think it's indisputable that that should be our course.

Yet the Kean/Hamilton editorial in the Washington Post also said the following:
--We face a rising tide of radicalization and rage in the Muslim world -- a trend to which our own actions have contributed. The enduring threat is not Osama bin Laden but young Muslims with no jobs and no hope, who are angry with their own governments and increasingly see the United States as an enemy of Islam;
--Four years ago, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld famously asked his advisers: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
The answer is no;
--We are also failing in the struggle of ideas. We have not been persuasive in enlisting the energy and sympathy of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims against the extremist threat. That is not because of who we are: Polling data consistently show strong support in the Muslim world for American values, including our political system and respect for human rights, liberty and equality. Rather, U.S. policy choices have undermined support.

Clearly, Obama's reference to the Kean/Hamilton editorial is not nearly as comprehensive as it ought to have been. Attacking Taliban/al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan's northwest, in the absence of Pakistan's desire or ability to attend to the problem, is but a small part of the prescription offered by the two.

And the coverage by major print media on this critical issue? From the NY Times, this: "In a tense 90-minute debate among the Democrats — marked by bouts of shouting and finger-pointing — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York went after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois aggressively, contending that he had switched his positions on crucial issues, including health care and financing the Iraq war. Mr. Obama said she was distorting his record."
From the Washington Post: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tried repeatedly to knock Sen. Barack Obama off his footing during a high-stakes debate here on Saturday night -- criticizing his health-care proposal and questioning his ability to bring about change and actually serve as president."
From the Boston Globe: "Presidential candidates in both parties, facing a critical and increasingly competitive Tuesday primary here, got personal and sometimes nasty with each other last night in separate prime-time debates, arguing fiercely about who has the better record and who is more likable."
Only the LA Times included that part of the debate, with Sen. Clinton's statement on the costs to the US of replacing Pervez Musharraf (a move suggested by Gov. Richardson who said "I would ask Musharraf to step aside"): "If you remove Musharraf and have elections, it's going to be very difficult for the United States to be able to control what comes next."
And even here, there was no challenge to her statement that Musharraf "is the elected president" even though he secured that office with the help of rigged elections and a gerrymandered supreme court.
In short, there was little effort by the Democratic candidates to offer a comprehensible and comprehensive policy argument on Pakistan and its increasingly lawless and radicalized provinces. And certainly there was no moderator challenge to any of the statements made by the candidates (there wasn't even a correction suggested to, nor offered by, Governor Richardson's repeated references to the "Soviet Union" which hasn't existed for nearly 20 years).

After nearly seven years of foreign policy debacles created by substandard leadership and the lives and money spent on these poorly considered and badly planned enterprises, one would think it was beyond time for thoughtful policy positions and their articulation. Guess not.