Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Wow.

Not only were BushCo not prepared to deal with "soft" power (her husb... President Bush chose a specialist on Russia for NSA), they still can't get past the idea of States as the only players.

And relatively irrelevant States as their focus as well.

The very idea of the Bush administration even *wanting* to deal with anything which might be labeled "soft" (and complex) is laughable. Everything this administration has done to date is shallow, onesided, and simplistic (as opposed to "simple"). And MattB is right about not being able to get past the idea of states as the only players...

Perhaps "soft power" issues would not be so soft if they had measurable returns on investment. "Complex" always sounds like an excuse for expensive boondoggles that lack tangible results. Could you even measure the effect on the global economy if we simply eliminated all international economic policy outside of the IMF and World bank?

This is not best understood as an issue of hard/soft power.

The situation in the United States is comparable to the Board of Directors taking over day-to-day operations of a company. Bushco does not understand how things operate in the real world.

In the world of the Board, the company is a set of financial statements, a list of products, buildings, and subsidiaries, and generic mission statement. In the world of the company officer, the company is a set of individuals serving as internal talent, suppliers, distributors, and so on and the relationships those individuals have.

Lacking any knowledge of the day-to-day operations of a company, a Board blunders in, hires and fires people, changes the mission statement and organizational chart, sells and acquires assets, and ends up making a shambles. This is Bushco.

The Democrats have always been better at running the economy because they have looked to the long-term health of the environment in which it operates. Since Bushco does not care about the absolute success or failure of the economy, but only their performance in it relative to the bottom 99%, they will probably be extremely satisfied with the economic wreckage that the deficits, the damaged world relations, and the loss of civil liberties will incur.

As for the performance of Clinton's team, one should note that they thwarted all attempted foreign attacks on American soil (except for the first WTC bombing, which happened just as they were taking over). While Clinton deserves criticism for his appointments of Freeh, Deutsch, and Woolsey, these are hardly liberals. It is conservatives of both parties that have failed in national security posts. And they failed because they refused to bring in speakers of Dari and Pashto, because they had no non-white agents to place in foreign lands, and (to a lesser extent) because they refused for the most part to take seriously right-wing extremism, which has ties to Islamic extremism.

I'm somewhat surprised by the endorsement of Ken Dam, based on his performance as one of my law school professors not too many years ago.

I think there's pretty objective evidence that O'Neill was better than Snow. All you have to do is look at Alcoa (O'Neill's) and the company Snow ran to contrast their performance. Oneill turned Alcoa around and made it profitable and expanded its business. Snow got a golden parachute for running his company into the ground.

I'm not saying that being a CEO is a direct correlation to being a good Treasury secretary, but as a proxy of prowess it's the exact argument we make when we hire a CEO for Treasury Sec in the first place - that his financial and fiscal management in one area will theoretically translate to the other.

By that proxy observable, O'Neill brought much more to Treasury than Snow, though one can dynamically Snow was more effective because of less cross-interference from White House policy making.

Charles makes a number of good points. I strongly suspect some of the intelligence failure on Iraq had much to do with neoconservatives having easy access to various agencies during the Clinton administration. If foreign policy is to be bipartisan, there ought to be contact with previous administrations but I suspect there was a breakdown because of the ideological assumptions of the neoconservatives. At least two common denominators between the Clinton years and the George W. years were James Woolsey and Richard Perle, both strong advocates of the Bush policies in the media and both quite wrong. The investigations examining the intelligence failures on Iraq should be looking at this as a possible source of the mindset that developed in Washington. I think it's also important to remember that the 2000 assessment on Iraq (during Clinton's last year), though wrong, was far less alarming than the 2002 assessment which was grossly wrong.

One thought on Treasury: I'm no economist but I currently fail to see a rational economic policy in the Bush Administration beyond trouble-shooting emergencies and occassionally applying band-aids. At least O'Neil tried to have a policy.

Dark arts? Drezner's use of those two words have more than the usual implications, don't they?

These folks came into office with an agenda and an ideology, and the unshakeable belief that when reality does not conform to the ideology, it's reality that's wrong. Couple that with a lack of concern for the long-term health of the country and we have the recipe for the disaster that is Bush.

As the Democrats prepare to make it official, we suddenly have a big slug of Treasury and related posts from the perfesser. At the same time, there is that Bloomberg article, recounting Rubin’s (literal) embrace of Kerry at a campaign fund raiser. Highly suspicious.

There is good reason right now to ponder the relative strength of Treasury Departments and economic policy making across presidential administrations. The Fed has predicted that US GDP growth this year (Q4 to Q4) will run in the 4.25%-4.75% range, but private estimates are looking a bit south of that pace now. It is comforting to know that Kerry has turned to the financial sector (rather than metals and transport) for financial advice, but he may have a mess on his hands.

There is also good reason to ponder the strength of the rest of the foreign policy making apparatus of the next government. It’s pretty clear that Berger is not going to be available. The Democrats certainly had time to think over the problems of non-state foreign policy actors during Clinton’s tenure, but have been in the wilderness for both bouts of Iraq fighting. Who are the serious thinkers, with sufficient Washington experience to pick up the reigns immediately? If Kerry wins, he will be in charge of his own transition at the same time he is dealing with Iraq’s. Tough timing.

I recall being told that a career in the economics “cone” at State could prove disappointing, since all the finance stuff was taken over by the more powerful Treasury Department, and all the good trade stuff had been lost to USTR. Now, as Drezner notes, State has snatched away functions from Treasury. To a large extent, these shifts seems the result of leadership at various agencies. So depending on who ends up where in the cabinet, State, Treasury, USTR, Ag, Commerce (probably in diminishing order) have a shot at grabbing the brass ring in a new administration.

What Democrats really think Part 2:

http://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/07/what_democrats_.html

Rice, Rumsfeld, and Cheney (though not Powell) were proudly not interested in "soft power" behavior -- not simply ill-equipped. They believed, and still believe apparently, that a US that is feared -- one that acts toughly, unilaterally, and without negotiation after the first demand -- can actually achieve all of its foreign policy goals. "We don't do nuance", as it were. For instance, when Rice (whose career depended on seeing Russia through pre-Gorbachev eyes) took office she literally declared China a threat to the US, an unapologetic act of bellicosity. And they refused to sustain Clinton's negotiations with North Korea and Arafat. Meanwhile they embraced Sharon, also a true believer that unhesitant use of awesome force (not simply "displays") achieves policy goals.
Where does that take us? Not much real achievement, and the "logical" conclusion: to build a wall around the US.

http://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/07/bush_will_win_b.html

I am just not as dazzled by the long list of Clinton soft foreign policy achievements. Most things looked pretty much the same after as they did before. Israel and Palestine, worse on any objective scale. North Korea, still making nuclear bombs and exporting missles. Iraq still under ecomomic sanctions, still defying no-fly zones (and not respecting minority rights). Somalia and Rawnada, definitly worse. In fact the only place that seemed to change appreciably was in the Balkans where in a neanderthalish way he bombed the crap out of Serbia (including the Chinese embassy our first tip off on the CIA's abilities) without UN approval and or from France.

It could be that it was because of the nefarious influence of the neo-cons present in the Clinton administration who were sabota...(wait wait, there thats better, I had to adjust my tin foil hat I think some signals were leaking through).

I respect the argument that we may be in a much worse place today than 3 1/2 years ago, but at the very least you can say is that it is not the same place. Most of the pre-9/11 Bush foreign policy looked like Clintons just with less photo ops. 9/11 changed decades of beutiful inertia, and like it or not the world is a very different place.

When Kerry is elected I think the people who will most be dissapointed will not be the Neo Cons but the Neo Globalists (hmmmm, Neo Integrationists, Neo Negotiatists, nothing seems to fit). Bush has already largely charted the large brush strokes of foreign policy for the next term even if Nader wins. The JFK administration has shown no indication that it will abandon nation building in either Afganistan or Iraq, and if you think he will put any kind of serious pressure on Israel there is a bridge near the Republican National Convention I would like to sell to you.

At least two common denominators between the Clinton years and the George W. years were James Woolsey and Richard Perle, both strong advocates of the Bush policies in the media and both quite wrong. The investigations examining the intelligence failures on Iraq should be looking at this as a possible source of the mindset that developed in Washington.

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