In the Financial Times, Brent Scowcroft says that his "hunch" is that Bush's second term foreign policy will be very different than his first:
FT.com / Home UK - Scowcroft lambasts Bush's unilateralism: Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser and close collaborator of former president George H. W. Bush, told the Financial Times that the US administration's "unilateralist" stance had contributed to the decline of the transatlantic relationship.... Mr Scowcroft... [attacked]... the president's core foreign policies. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Mr Scowcroft said. "I think the president is mesmerised."... Mr Scowcroft said the US's initial failure to take up Nato offers of assistance in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 was a "severe rebuff".... He said US engagement with the UN and Nato in Afghanistan and Iraq was "as much an act of desperation as anything else ... to rescue a failing venture".... Mr Scowcroft said he hoped that if Mr Bush were re-elected he would change course more fundamentally. "This is a man who's really driven to seek re-election and done a lot of things with that in mind," he said. "I have something of a hunch that the second administration will be quite different from the first."...
Over in the Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray calls for the resignation of John Snow and the installation of a strong Treasury Secretary from the reality-based community to serve as Deputy President for a Reality-Based Economic Policy should (God forbid) Bush still be in power on January 22:
WSJ.com - Political Capital: For most of the nation's history, Treasury secretary was the most powerful post in government, after the presidency. From Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Mellon, Treasury chiefs controlled taxes, managed the budget, ran the Coast Guard and determined monetary policy. But in the last century, that power has been chipped away with creation of the Federal Reserve, the Office of Management and Budget and, most recently, the Department of Homeland Security.
Moreover, as the White House staff has grown, Treasury chiefs have moved further from the center of power. Former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Donald Regan gave up the Treasury job after concluding that he would have more sway as White House chief of staff. Former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen chafed at being hassled by 20-something White House aides.* The two most effective Treasury secretaries of recent decades -- James Baker and Robert Rubin -- succeeded largely because they had already served at 1600 Pennsylvania before taking the Treasury job, and retained a power base.
Messrs. O'Neill and Snow have proved the least effective in recent memory. And it is worth asking: Why? Part of the answer comes from the fact that national-security concerns have pushed economic matters to the back burner. The secretaries of state and defense have been in the spotlight in this administration, and economic policy has been secondary.
But much of the answer comes from the fact that, for this administration, economic policy has been a direct extension of political strategy. The tax cuts that characterized President Bush's first term were forged during the campaign, and were as much a plan for election and re-election as for economic reinvigoration. The Treasury secretary's job was taken over, in effect, by political adviser Karl Rove.
If Mr. Bush is re-elected, that could change. He won't be running for a third term and he won't be pushing tax cuts. Yawning budget deficits make that certain. And unless Brother Jeb Bush signs him on, Karl Rove will have lost his client.
That could be the chance for a new approach to economic policy. President Bush has suggested an ambitious agenda for his second term. He wants to rewrite the tax code, to encourage savings and eliminate loopholes. He wants to give Americans more control over their health-care plans. And he wants to remake the Social Security system, restoring its finances while creating private accounts for younger workers. If he is serious about all this, he will need a very strong Treasury secretary at his side.
But does the rubber hit the road? What is behind Scowcroft's "hunch" that second term foreign policy will be very different? Who will quit and who will be brought in, and how will all that affect George W. Bush's thinking? Who does Alan Murray want to nominate for second-term Treasury Secretary and Deputy President for a Reality-Based Economic Policy?
Hope and "hunches" are not a plan, people!
*This is an interesting assessment of Lloyd Bentsen's two-year tenure. Yes, Bentsen did not like being hassled by 20-somethings at all. But Lloyd Bentsen stepped into the job of Treasury Secretary with four big priorities: make sure the Clinton administration was fiscally responsible, help give Mexico a better chance by passing NAFTA, push for free trade, and succeed in enacting health care reform. The first three of his priorities were the three great early successes of the Clinton administration, and it was not at all clear in the fall of 1992 that any of those would be Clinton priorities at all. And even once Bentsen had helped persuade Clinton to adopt these priorities, he was still indispensible: neither the 2003 budget nor NAFTA would have passed without Bentsen's share of the lobbying effort.
The fourth--well, yes, that was a catastrophic failure.
But all in all Bentsen's time as Treasury Secretary seems to me to be one of great success.
Posted by DeLong at October 19, 2004 12:48 PM | TrackBackAnd those that read "Bush's Brain" know that Karl Rove's goal is to make the Republican party the dominate party for the next 40-50 years. George W Bush is his instrument and not the long term goal. If you see what Rove wrought in Texas and in Alabama, you know that nothing will make any future Republican administrations any less radically conservative. Scowcroft and Murray are dreaming if they think it might be better in a second term.
Posted by: Mary at October 19, 2004 01:02 PMMurray's also wrong if he thinks the deficit will stop the presidnet fropm proposing tax cuts in a second term. It didn't stop him in the first term when he was theoretically beholden to the voters, why will it stop him in a second term when he won't have to pretend that he cares.
Posted by: budgetwonk at October 19, 2004 01:14 PMIt appears that the strongest case they can make for re-electing Bush is that he's not going to govern like Bush.
Posted by: LowLife at October 19, 2004 01:19 PMBush is campaigning on making his budget cuts permanent.
Bush is campaigning on staying the course in Iraq (and elsewhere).
Bush has said in his campaign that he will not change course.
Who are these people to write otherwise?
Is this a strategy to confuse the electorate?
Maybe people were not paying attention on 2000 and were confused about Bush intentions?
Anyone paying attention today should not be confused by either of these articles. It is inexcusable for them to write such direct contradictions to what Bush has been saying.
However, these articles are in agreement with the finding that most Bush supporters are often mistaken about Bush policy positions.
How are we supposed to have a policy debate in this country if the press continues to print the Bush mischaracterizations of Kerry's policies and then present policies as belonging to Mr Bush that he clearly has not supported?
http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/latest-digest.html
Asia’s Own Agenda
Stephen Roach (New York)
I spend a lot of my time these days in Asia. I am currently between trips to the Far East — having just returned from Hong Kong and India a couple of weeks ago and getting ready to go back out to Singapore, Japan, and China in early November. My fixation on Asia reflects my view that this region is now where the action is. Most things we buy these days are made in Asia. Most of the incremental funding of the West’s excess spending is also provided by Asia. Yet signs are increasingly evident that this symbiotic relationship could be changing. Asia is now paying greater attention to its own agenda — a refocusing that could have profound implications for the global economy.
A story in the weekend Financial Times (October 16/17, 2004) contained a fascinating glimpse of this shift in Asian thinking. The headline said it all: “India to dip into forex reserves for domestic infrastructure upgrades.” As I noted recently, India’s infrastructure gap is staggering — it represents a very serious constraint on any manufacturing-led development strategy.
The new Indian government is under intense pressure to follow the lead of China in modernizing its antiquated infrastructure of roads, port facilities, and power distribution. But unlike China, which is awash in domestic saving to fund such efforts, India faces the serious twin constraints of a private saving deficiency and a budget deficit problem. So it has turned to some creative financing in order to meet this urgent need: According to the FT story, India has elected to put some $10-15 billion of its nearly $120 billion in foreign exchange reserves to work in funding this effort.
India is not alone in following this approach. At the start of this year, China led the way in deploying some of its foreign exchange reserves for domestic purposes — in this instance, injecting $45 billion of capital into two of its largest policy banks, the Bank of China and the China Construction Bank.
Stephen Roach is suggesting that China and India may be inclined to take a broader approach to using foreign currency reserves than just storing dollars to maintain American consumption of Asian exports. If that is so, the doolar could soon be under considerable pressure.
David Ignatius in today's Washington Post has a bit of information about how Bush's foreign policy may have already changed, at least temporarily. I wonder if it is accurate:
"The paradox of Bush is that when you examine his actual policies in Iraq over the past six months, they appear to reflect precisely the sort of learning from experience that the president refuses publicly to acknowledge. The key architect of Iraq policy today is probably Robert Blackwill, a thoughtful former diplomat who serves on the staff of the National Security Council -- not the neoconservatives in the Pentagon such as Paul Wolfowitz, who urged the president to war. Wolfowitz's idealism has been replaced by Blackwill's calculating pragmatism, at least for the moment. Whether this ascendancy would continue in a second Bush administration is Washington's most interesting conundrum. The fact that we can only guess at the answer illustrates the problem.
Has Bush learned anything from Iraq? Does he understand how badly things have gone wrong there, and can he avoid making similar errors in the future? In his determination to avoid any appearance of weakness, Bush often acts like a man who is impervious to such questions. Refusing to admit mistakes and thereby learn from them is a dangerous quality for a leader.
davidignatius@washpost.com"
Posted by: Philipw2 at October 19, 2004 01:42 PMPhilipw2
I thought that Negroponte was brougt in to apply the lessions of the Contra wars. He has some experience with death squads. Is that the new Iraq policy?
Anne needs a blog of her own. (And I would read it.)
Posted by: ogmb at October 19, 2004 02:35 PMI read that The Washington Times, surprise surprise, endorsed Bush. When asked about this, editorial page editor Tony Blankley said that Gen. Scowcroft had a Sept. 10 mentality. Because, you know, someone with decades of military and foreign policy experience like Blankley has so much more credibility over Scowcroft. Oh, wait.
Posted by: Brian at October 19, 2004 03:10 PMSnowcroft is full of it.
If you want to get an indicator of where Bush's second term would head, you need to look at his tenure as Governor of Texas. His first term there was truly that of a uniter - mostly due to a traditional comity between R's and D's - and was, for Texas at least, reasonably non-partisan. His second term was very similar to his first term as pResident. Tax cuts, legislation tailored toward business and against private citizens, extreme partisanship in the legislature, diminished state regulation and so forth.
I suspect a second term now, particularly absent at least a D Senate, would be even more radical than the first.
Posted by: Charles M at October 19, 2004 03:24 PMA LOT of people are dreaming about Bush's second term being better, or talking about putting pressure on Bush after he's reelected.
These people are as loonie as LaRouche and Moon. There's no evidence whatsoever for what they say, and plenty of evidence against it.
Many of them are just too gutless to oppose Rove. Others are looking for some kind of payoff. Others have been playing the non-partisan wiseguy role for so long that they can't change. They're really disgraceful, and are being paid far too much for being as wong as they are.
Posted by: Zizka at October 19, 2004 03:52 PM2003 budget?
Posted by: KevinNYC at October 19, 2004 03:54 PM2nd term - maybe a wing and a prayer - for all os us.
Posted by: pfknc at October 19, 2004 04:47 PMIn the words of Samuel Johnson (who was speaking of second marriages): "the triumph of hope over experience."
Posted by: mcm at October 19, 2004 04:54 PMBush's second term will be different... Unfettered by the constraints put on him by the voting public... No longer necessary to keep up appearances... To gladhand the press... Or employ (or appease) internal rivals... Put up with critical voices at home or abroad... Bush's second term will be... different...
Posted by: ogmb at October 19, 2004 05:30 PMThis is not the first instance of people mistaking their own hopes and assumptions for the likely behavior of others. This sort of thinking is seen all the time, especially between cultures - the assumption that democracy is somehow natural to every culture and all people, everywhere, for instance. There is no reason to take it seriously.
Similarly, any dismissal of another's thinking based on the claim that the other is engaged in pre-9/11 thinking is pure, self-serving crap.
By the way, either "This is Rumor Control" or "Talking Points" (can't find it now) claims to have word that Scowcroft very plainly told the interviewer he was on background, and was simply betrayed. If true, then we have probably come closer to his real views than in most of his other public pronouncements.
Posted by: kharris at October 20, 2004 04:32 AM...and another thing.
The earlier post - "Krugman Feels a Draft" - takes a very different approach to analysis that that highlighted here. Rather than "what would a person who thinks the way I think do?", Krugman simply looks for the logical implications of the mix of policies being proposed. If taxes are going to be cut and spending increased, deficits are likely to result. It matters not if the guy proposing tax cuts and spending increases tells you there won't be a deficit.
If we are running out of ground troops and the policies proposed show an additional need for ground troops, while (as reported in today's WSJ) recruiting for the reserves in September fell 45% short of target, that for regular troops fell 30% short, well somethings gotta give. Odds of a draft are higher than the guys in charge are saying. Add in that our war-fighting plan has drifted toward throwing non-crack troops into battle, and you have to suspect that we are moving toward war-fighting that fits well with a conscription-based army, war-fighting with higher casualties all around. We don't need to know that a candidate denies he would resort to conscription to know that conscription is a logic outcome of the policies Bush is following and proposes to continue following.
Too much wishful thinking makes for bad analysis, which makes for bad politics.
Posted by: kharris at October 20, 2004 05:18 AMI agree with kharris (and Krugman, of course) about looking at the inherent logic of the situation and see where that leads. But I also believe that people who stick their hand in fire usually learn something. Now that Iraq has sunk in; no one is talking about Syria or Iran. And they have made great efforts to say no North Korea. So already we can say that in foreign policy the second term is unlikely to be the same as the first.
That is not to deny Krugman's excellent point.
Posted by: philipw2 at October 20, 2004 06:58 AMI agree with kharris (and Krugman, of course) about looking at the inherent logic of the situation and see where that leads. But I also believe that people who stick their hand in fire usually learn something. Now that Iraq has sunk in; no one is talking about Syria or Iran. And they have made great efforts to say no North Korea. So already we can say that in foreign policy the second term is unlikely to be the same as the first.
That is not to deny Krugman's excellent point.
Posted by: philipw2 at October 20, 2004 07:34 AMSomebody once said that insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results. By this standard, the "grownup" Republicans who think that GWB will change for the better if reelected are not being sane.
Posted by: rea at October 20, 2004 08:46 AMThere is no evidence that Pres Bush, if governing with a stronger mandate than last time (how could it be worse?) will pursue more moderate policies.
One of the points Nicolas Lemann made in the New Yorker was that Bush doesn't conceal his agenda, if you read his policy speeches.
His agenda is:
- privatisation of Social Security
- appoint pro life justices to the Supreme Court
- further the 'flat tax' eg by further reducing progressive taxation, make permanent the existing tax cuts
- pre emptive military and foreign policy
- plethora of religious initiatives
He is a man of simple, uncomplicated faith in his rightness.
There is no doubt this is what he will do, he does what he says he will do. That is supposed to be his strength as a president, right?
Why do people believe otherwise?
Posted by: John at October 20, 2004 10:16 AMIt is an extraordinary example of Lloyd Bentsen's powers that he helped pass the 2003 budget.
Posted by: badger ellen at October 20, 2004 11:50 AMBrian (10/20/04, 3:10 CDT) -
I really like the image of "General" Tony Blankley telling Brent Scowcroft what to do. Actually, if you watch Blankley on the McLaughlin Group (always good for a laugh), only one quote springs to mind: Judd Nelson, in ^The Breakfast Club^:
"Does Barry Manilow know you raid his closet?"
Phillipw2 said:"But I also believe that people who stick their hand in fire usually learn something."
Bush was not the one putting his hand in the fire. He left that for the little people to do.
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