Former Chicago Mayor and ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and for the life of me I can’t identify its target audience. Its title is “Opposing Trump Isn’t a Global Strategy”, a thesis with which I completely agree. The slug is “Here’s my first draft of a national-security agenda for Democrats seeking the White House in 2028.”
As I see it prospective audiences include:
- Democratic primary voters
- Democratic candidates and staff
- Donor class
- Foreign policy establishment
- Media gatekeepers
- Future administration personnel pools
Let’s consider some of those. One might speculate that the audience is Democrats who plan to run for president in 2028 or their staffs. Do any of them or their staffs read the Wall Street Journal?
Another possible audience is Democrats who read the Wall Street Journal. I’m one of them and I read his op-ed—mission accomplished. Frankly, I doubt that I or even people like me are the target audience.
Another possibility is that the op-ed is aimed at potential donors to his own presidential campaign. I find that unlikely. Mr. Emanuel does not strike me as a viable candidate in today’s Democratic Party. Bluntly, he is “too male and too pale,” and he is much more Zionist than most Democratic primary voters.
After more than 600 words of preamble he finally produces some foreign policy proposals, divided by area of the world (Europe, Indo-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Western Hemisphere). That lends weight to the that his purpose in the op-ed is to signal seriousness.
I agree with some of what he has to say and disagree with other parts. I’ll devote more serious attention to his actual proposals in another post but in this post I want to focus on his target audience.
The only likely guess I’m left with is that I suspect he’s angling for a cabinet-level position in a future Democratic White House and trying to prove he’s a serious thinker about foreign policy. Does anyone else have other ideas?
The tragically sad part of his op-ed is that I think that Democrats should be paying attention to what he has to say. Opposing Trump is not a sufficient foreign policy. Yet that increasingly appears to be the entirety of what many Democratic candidates at every level are offering.
