Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Why the hate? There are many other forums in the US and the world where people can get together and debate the issues, all the while being attributed to their remarks. The CFR have their privacy policy because they want free and completely unfettered dialogue, free of any politics. Regardless of how you feel about their supposed cowardice for not losing an executive position, the fact remains that the CFR's membership is made up of some very impressive established names and up and comers. They have a lot to lose, and quite frankly I believe that it's worth this pitance of a cost in order to get some of our brightest minds together to debate the issues.

Although I only follow your blog on and off, I don't believe that you've expressed similar displeasure towards The Economist's habit of not attributing names to articles, which although undertaken for different reasons still produces the same result

Removing anonymity would basically mean that corporate members of the CFR would go mute. I think there are many good reasons to be critical of the council, but this is not one of them.

There are people pissed at Bush for his reversals at Falloojah and Najaf? I thought the reversals were on the short list of things that Bush has done right in Iraq.

What does Drezner mean by "breakdown of the policy process"?

One thing to be said for the Clinton foreign policy team. They learned from their mistakes and were better by the end of the administration than the beginning. Clinton never did get a good grip on the intelligence. Woolsey was one of his worst appointments. Tenet turned out to be dysfunctional. There was no love lost between the military and Clinton. That led to inaction. Clinton was willing to seek outside help from Carter and Powell when he was not up to speed. At least Clinton recognized that God was not talking to him and that his gut reaction was not good enough.

Clinton was saddled with an incompetent FBI chief that was at war with the administration. His inability to fire Freeh or otherwise deal with him hurt his intelligence capabilities.

OTOH, Clinton was very successful in interactions with NATO, N Ireland, N Korea and he had an almost in Palestine. Clinton also had bad luck. He had the assassination of Rabin that set back the Palestine solution. He was handed an untenable situation in Somalia. Mostly, Clinton avoided having to use the military, but when he did, he was successful.

Bush has had very few foreign policy successes, mostly because he drops the ball. NK, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, have all suffered because of inadequate planning or lack of effort. Clinton did not intervene in a timely fashion in Rwanda even though that would have been difficult. Similarly, Mr. Bush has done nothing about Sudan. Mr Bush has created a climate that makes it difficult to work with countries that should be our allies.

Was policy that much better under Bush 41 than Clinton? Didn't Bush diplomats botch their chance to keep Saddam out of Kuwait? Was Panama a good idea? We spend a decade supporting corrupt regimes and then have to take them out? Didn't Bush barf on the Japanese with a group of businessmen? Republican foreign policy has not always been successful.

In a country where an unstudied utterance or bit of silliness can bury a person ("Would you like me to take the tank around the circuit one more time, Governor Dukakis, or would you like to answer Bernie's next question?") an organization like the CFR needs a tiny sphere of magnanimity, civility and discretion to operate at all. As Kevin Drum said, policy wonkery is dead. It has been killed off in the public sphere by fanaticism and the electronic record.

We have a vigorous and open political debates in the US? How is it then that the mainstream media and apparently most members of Congress still seem to apply behavioral standards appropriate for a developmentally disabled 10 year old to George Bush, jr.? I don't know what CFR is (or who the members are) but if they are being secretive, well, any more so then Cheney and his corporate "energy policy" advisors? We can't even manage to make public officials accountable or their deliberations and outside consultations public, as well as Bush's numerous attempts to shut the public out of the process of making determinations regarding sale of timber on public lands, modifications (at corporate behest) of "organic" standards, etc. Some of his attempts have been successful and Ashcroft has publicly stated he intends to pretty much repeal (without bothering to involve Congress) the FOI Act.

For a (so far...I'm up to page 150 or so) view of Clinton foreign policy, Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace" seems pretty good. 'Course, maybe I'm just proud of finding it in the bargain bin for $4.99 at Waldenbooks.

Clinton's foreign policy was conducted during the eight easiest years of the 20th century (at least).

Sitting on his hands during the Rwanda genocide wasn't exactly a high point of public policy making and we've now discovered that he missed not one, not two but three opportunities to grab bin Laden.

I'm with bakho (excellent post). US foreign policy under Clinton was the best in my lifetime, as far back as Eisenhower. Hopefully it hasn't been so long that the Clinton team reassembled under President Kerry will not be able to hit the ground running. We need them desperately and I don't think they'd fumble another Rwanda even with a Delay-led congress.

Have to agree with others here that having more that one set of rules is likely to contribute to better, rather than worse, discussion. It is, after all, what we do in our private lives, what public officials do in their public lives and almost certainly what foreign policy intellectuals would do with or without the CFR to arrange things for them. The CFR is facilitating one type of discussion. The National Press Club, for instance, facilitates another. Good for them both.

Bakho:

In answer to:

What does Drezner mean by "breakdown of the policy process"?

At a GUESS, one thing they had in mind was the exclusion of the State Department for the Iraq war planning process on the grounds that they were all obstructionists. This, of course, had the effect of excluding basically all the people who actually knew anything about Iraq; calling it a breakdown of the process seems fair.

"Clinton's foreign policy was conducted during the eight easiest years of the 20th century (at least)."

I'm with am on this one. I'd credit the Clinton Administration with learning from mistakes, especially during he first term, but national security never came easily for them. The "lob a few Tomahawks and hope for he best" counter-terrorism policy was not especially impressive, for example.

Clinton was successful in interactions with NK? Which meaning of "successful" are you using, Bakho?

Drezner identifies populist rhetoric with protectionism. Does that mean that he believes that free trade is anti-populist? People here have been telling me for over a year that free trade does not harm labor, but it sounds as if Drezner thinks it does.

Or maybe populism, for Drezner, is just a generic slam at anyone to the left of Lieberman. For him that's a cost-free charge, since he's presumably anti-labor, but Democrats reallt need to deal with this, since labor still exists and is part of the Democratic core, even though they refuse to pander of course.

"Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace" seems pretty good."

Isn't it about time for Halberstam to write "The Worst and the Stupidest"? If there was ever a presidency deserving of the title, this is it.

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Hey am, got some cites on those missed Clinton opportunities to grab bin Laden? (JFTR, the story that the Sudanese offered him up on a silver platter has long since been debunked. I'm betting that's one of them, and that the other two are BS as well.)

It is true that the global situation the Clinton administration was a lot easier, from an American point of view, than any of his predecessors. He faced no rival or alliance of rival states that could possibly compete with the US. What he had to worry about were problems that Cold War Presidents would not have thought part of "foreign policy": development, disease, genocide, environmental degradation and terrorism. In dealing with these things, he recognised correctly that US power was limited. The Clinton administration had some sense that endemic resentment of US power was inevitable, but that its virulence could be controlled. They also realized (at least to some extent) that post-modern problems require post-modern institutions.

Objectively, however, the situation the Bush administration found itself in after 9/11 was even easier: for a moment, 9/11 vastly reduced the endemic resentment of American power. Moreover, almost all the states in the world had a common interest in fighting Sunni extremism.

It was the "Axis of Evil" speech and the decision to consider the Guantanomo prisoners beyond the reach of any law, domestic or international, that brought the US to its current position. Practically any non-American could have explained why these policies would invoke resentment in the rest of the world. The 2002 National Security Strategy basically told the rest of the world that they *should* fear American power (surely a first in the annals of American public diplomacy).

If Clinton had done similar things, he wouldn't have been as "lucky."

Protectionism is "populist" not because Free trade hurts labor, but because people PERCEIVE it as hurting labor. "Populist" isn't liberalism, it is the politics of pandering. Appeals to "family values" and anti flag-burning amendments are just as populist as protecting "Good American Jobs" and taking care of "the little guy" when he's down. George Wallace was a populist, appealing to popular southern white prejudices. Clinton was, in most ways other than economic policy, a populist - the accusation that he governed based on "the polls" was a veiled accusation of populism.

Populism tends to be big on government "solutions" to everyday problems. Some folks class populism as the opposite of libertarianism - libertarians want government out of the pocketbook and the bedroom, populists put government IN both. Make "them" solve and pay for "our" problems - that is the populist way. Calling a liberal proposal "populist" is a way of saying "This proposal isn't meant to solve a problem, it is just meant to cover it up and get votes." (Use "populism" in a sentence: Bush's prescription drug program is pure populism.)

Let me comment on the "more lucky than good" idiocy. If you look at folk who think and plan, to a large extent they anticipate trouble and are ready for it, or at a minimum not completely gormless when it comes. I think that covers the economic team in the Clinton years, and most of their foreign policy. Their mistakes were made early, and they learned from them.

If you want to see what happens when you are neither prepared or ready, or have not a clue and incompetent underlings, of course there is Somalia, Waco, the health care fiasco and just about anything that happened since 2000.

The leash got pulled a lot tighter after 1993, but the dogs were set free after 2000.

The typical object this lucky meme, was/is Eisenhower. On reflection, I would describe his administrative style as careful and I would say the same for the Bush I and the Clinton economic and foreign policy on balance.

Bush and Reagan OTOH were and are reckless. Now Carter and Ford were unlucky, but too trusting

The latest Foreign Affairs issue offers several articles in retrospective on the war in Iraq. I just got it yesterday and haven't had a chance to read through. But it looked from a cursory glance to include some serious dissenting views with Bush policy. Brad, if you get FA you might want to consider excerpting a few points from this latest issue. --M

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