My post of yesterday has evoked a post today at Outside the Beltway from James Joyner and has occasioned an interesting conversation in comments there:
While that’s certainly the arrangement that the Framers had in mind, it hasn’t worked that way in my lifetime. Arguably, it hasn’t worked that way in living memory.
James and the commenters miss something important. Whether American voters are interested in it or not and whether presidents are interested in it or not, foreign policy is something that happens to presidents. The last president to run on his foreign policy experience was George H. W. Bush. Nonetheless every president since him has found his presidency largely devoted to foreign policy, even consumed by it. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama ran campaigns that emphasized domestic policy. Their presidencies became preoccupied with foreign policy.
It’s not hard to discern why that might be. It’s in the job description, as I pointed out yesterday.
We have fifty governors, each of whose attention is completely devoted to domestic policy, but only one president, much of whose attention will inevitably be captured by foreign policy. Doesn’t it make sense to consider foreign policy more seriously when selecting a president?
Let’s imagine a presidential candidates’ debate. If I were coming up with ten questions questions to ask, here’s how I would allocate them:
Foreign policy—5 questions
The economy—1 question
Race relations—1 question
Health care policy—1 question
Education—1 question
The budget—1 question
It’s practically the opposite.
At least early on, the candidates are actually appealing to donors, who tend to have single issue focus. That’s how they drop out, fundraising dries up.
Also,. that’s why we used to elect Generals, for better or worse. They were more comfortable with killing than statesmen, who sadly, are better at debating.
Unless the 2016 campaign was an anomaly, the funding game has changed completely. Previously, spending by presidential campaigns was increasingly exponentially every cycle and spending was a pretty fair predictor of the outcome of the race.
The 2016 campaign completely broke that. Not only did Trump spend half as much as Hillary Clinton, he spent less than W did in 2004. I really should write a post on this sometime. The big question is whether Obama was the anomaly, Trump was the anomaly, both, and whether anomalies are the new normal?
Additionally, I think the temper of the country has changed a lot over the last 25 years. I don’t think that candidates can appeal to the extremes and then dash to the center any more.
I don’t think that’s true. I think that politicians are much more casual about killing than generals are.
Your version of the debate would get awful ratings. No one would watch. That aside, a lot of foreign policy is hard to predict. Its just not possible to have in depth knowledge about every country. I would ask 2 or 3 foreign policy questions, then put the other 2 or three questions into our most pressing domestic issues, like health care.
Agree entirely with you on generals. Most who have served, there are exceptions, are more likely to try to avoid war and killing. The chickenhawk politicians who like to talk tough and posture are the ones that worry me about being pro-war. Also, of the former generals who became POTUS only a few were career military. Most cMe from wealthy, influential families, politicians in training.
Steve
President Grant would disagree. And yes, I think Obama and Trump both broke the mold. Quite possibly social media is the reason for both, no matter how different they appear.
Money matters less in a world of social media. Being “viral” (hate that word, but can’t think of a better equivalent) is more important. Trump’s advantage is he is viral practically every day.
Oh, I fully agree with you that foreign policy is the most important thing Presidents do, in that they do it essentially without input from Congress or the courts. My post was mostly just noting that it has been a very long time since Presidents were also the agenda setters on domestic policy, including even the budget.
There’s a great line from the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, spoken by Ethel Merman as only she could deliver it:
We are living in a globalized world and most of the challenges the president will confront are foreign policy ones. It’s time to push back on the notion of the president as governor-at-large. Or worse, senator-at-large.
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 for many reasons including foreign policy grounds. We need better presidential candidates. We need a candidate for the 2020s not the 1990s.