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May 04, 2005
Leading
The main thrust behind the two principles is to blur the line between private actions and government policy. And this has a crucial implication for Democrats who, being out of power right now, can't make foreign policy anyway.
We may not be able to make foreign policy, but on key issues, we can try to get the government to follow our lead. That is, we see an issue, and we address it despite the fact that we're not the governing party. This means waging a popular campaign to focus voters' attention on it, say, for the sake of argument, the issue is U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. (And clearly it can't be 100 campaigns on 100 issues; it must be a single issue or it risks diluting the message.) Even if we don't succeed in getting the desired change, we've still achieve two things. 1) We've made our best stand on an issue we care about. 2) And in the process of campaigning for foreign-policy issue, Democrats begin branding themselves as a foreign-policy party. That is, looking like you're strong on foreign policy is a handy by-product of actually being strong on foreign policy.
It's the same point that many commentators made about the party after the '04 election: the best way to look like a party with a bedrock set of values is to start being one. So the best way to be a foreign-policy party is to start challenging the administration, day and night, to change its policy with (to belabor my example) Saudi Arabia. Or Argentina. Or France. Or whatever. At least we can try to lead the country's policy in directions we prefer.
Now you might object that it's not appropriate to hash out international matters in the arena of domestic politics, that it unduly hampers the government's diplomacy. But there's actually a rather long history of this. Remember the Committee for the Present Danger? (They were the Republicans who pushed for an arms build-up in the middle of the detente of the Carter administration.) They pushed hard, and when they got their man Reagan in the White House, largely on the "present danger" issue, the first thing he did was initiate a massive arms build up. Its time to Committee-for-the-Present-Danger them back. It's time to lead.
Posted by James Fichter at May 4, 2005 07:01 AM
