George Friedman
Monday night's presidential
foreign policy debate probably won't change the opinion of many voters.
Proponents of President Barack Obama are still convinced that Mitt Romney is a
fool and a liar. Proponents of former Gov. Romney have the same view of the
president.
Of course, this is normal in any American presidential race. Along with the eternal conviction that the party in
power is destroying the country, we have regarded Abraham Lincoln, during the
1860 election, as a simple-minded country bumpkin with a touch of larceny;
Franklin Roosevelt as a rich dilettante and socialist; and Dwight Eisenhower as
a bumbling fool who is lazy and incapable of understanding the complexity of
the world -- this about the man who, during World War II, led the most complex
military coalition on the planet to victory.
We like to think that our
politics have never been less civil than they are today. Given that Andrew
Jackson's wife was accused of being a prostitute, Grover Cleveland was said to
have illegitimate children and Lyndon Johnson faced the chant "Hey, hey,
LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" I will assert that the
Obama-Romney campaign doesn't even register on the vilification scale.
The founders wouldn't have
minded this culture of contempt for politicians. In founding the republic, their fundamental fear was that the power of the state would
usurp the freedoms of the states and individuals. They
purposefully created a political regime so complex that it is, in its
normal state, immobilized. They would not have objected if professional
politicians were also held in contempt as an additional protection. Ironically,
while the founders opposed both political parties and professional politicians,
preferring to imagine that learned men take time from their daily lives to make
the sacrifice of service, many became full-time politicians and vilified
one another. Thomas Jefferson's campaign said of John Adams that he had a
"hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness
of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Adams' campaign
stated that Jefferson was "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a
half-breed Indian squaw sired by a Virginia mulatto father." And Jefferson
and Adams were friends. I would suggest suspending the idea that we have never
had so vicious a politics.
Let me move to a more radical
thought. Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are capable men, as well
intentioned as ambitious men seeking power can be. Just as I doubt that Jefferson
and Adams were as stupid and malicious as their campaigns tried to portray one
another, the same can be said of Romney and Obama. I am not suggesting for a
moment that the circus of accusations stop, however. To the contrary, seeing
how one endures slander is an outstanding measure of a leader's character
and an opportunity to learn how the candidate will react to the sorts of unreasonable and unfair conditions that the president is sure to encounter.
A president will face a world
that does not wish the United States well in all cases and an opposition that
will try anything, fair or foul, to make the president fail. A president who
breaks down when he is mistreated -- as Edmund Muskie, a senator running for
president in 1972, did over charges made against his wife -- is a non-starter.
Muskie's campaign immediately collapsed, as it should have. A president
who expects to be treated fairly is an immediate liability.
The True Objective of Debates
A debate is not about policy.
It is impossible to state a coherent policy on any complex matter in 90
seconds. The debates between Lincoln and Steven Douglas did go far in that
direction, but then it wasn't on national television, and it was for senator of
Illinois, not the presidency. That left room for contemplation. It should be
remembered that prior to the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960, there were no debates,
partly because there was no television and partly, perhaps, because the ability
to debate was not seen as the appropriate measure of a president.
Debates test one thing: the
ability to quickly respond to questions of numbing complexity that are
impossible to answer in the time available. They put a premium on being fast
and clever but don't say much about how smart a candidate is. Nor are they
meant to, in part because being smart, in an academic sense, is not essential
to be president -- as many have demonstrated. At their best, debates test
a candidate's coolness under pressure and ability to articulate some thought at
least vaguely connected to the question while convincing the viewers that he or
she is both personable and serious.
That is, after all, what
leadership is about. We have had enormously intelligent presidents who simply
couldn't lead. Here, I think of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, both of whom
had substantial and demonstrable intellects but neither of whom, when
confronted by the disastrous, could rapidly contrive both a response and a
commanding and reassuring presence in public. In that sense, their intellects
betrayed them. Each wanted the right answer, when what was needed was a fast
one. Each was succeeded by someone who could provide a fast answer. FDR's
famous first 100 days did not solve the Depression, but they did give the sense
that someone was in charge. FDR and Ronald Reagan could reassure the country
that they knew what they were doing while they rapidly tried things that might
work.
Therefore, the question of who
won Monday's debate is not one that a viewer who spends his time focused on
foreign policy can answer. The candidates weren't speaking to those who make
their livings involved in or watching foreign affairs. Nor can we possibly
extract from the debate what either candidate intends to do in foreign policy,
because conveying that was not what they were trying to do. They were trying to
show how quickly and effectively they could respond to the unexpected, and that
they were leaders in the simplest sense of being both likeable and commanding,
which is the incredibly difficult combination the republic demands of its
presidents.
Technology's Impact
It is important to remember
that for most of our history there were no televisions and no debates.
Knowledge of the candidates filtered through speeches and letters. The distance
between the president and the public was even greater than today. In a
sense, the imperial presidency -- the president as first among equals of the
three branches of government -- really began with FDR, who used radio
brilliantly. But there were no debates or public press conferences in which to
challenge him.
The distance collapsed with
television and rapid-fire interplays, yet at the same time increased in another
way, as the president became the most public and pseudo-known character in
government. I say pseudo-known because, in fact, the president's greatest skill
lies in revealing himself selectively, in a way and to the extent that it
enhances his power.
What could be sensed in
debates were things like meanness of spirit, ability to listen, willingness to
improvise and, ultimately, there was a chance to look for humor and good will.
There was also a danger. The debate put a premium on articulateness, but it is
not clear that the well-spoken candidate -- or at least the candidate who could
speak most clearly most quickly -- also thought more clearly. There are many
people who think clearly but speak slowly while acting quickly. They are not
meant for Bob Schieffer or Candy Crowley's meat grinder.
The point of this is to
continue a previous argument I have been making. The issues-based candidacy is
a fallacy, especially because events determine the issues, and the most
important events, such as 9/11 and the financial crash, are not always
expected. Therefore, reality divides the candidate's policy papers from the
candidate's policies.
I am arguing that the subject
of the debate and the specific answers in the debate are doubly unimportant.
First, the nature of these debates makes coherent presentation impossible.
Second, the stated policies, such as they are, have little to do with the
results of the debate. Nor will the better debater win. The winner of the
debate will be the one whose soul, when glimpsed, appears able to withstand the
burdens of the presidency. Romney's surge had less to do with Obama's
performance and more to do with what the viewer learned of Romney.
This has always been what
American presidential campaigns are about. All that has happened is that
television intensified it and the debate purified it. A debate is a 90-minute
opportunity to see a candidate under pressure. What the viewer determines
he saw will be critical.
I am also making a parallel
argument that our perception of today's political campaigns as uniquely vicious
is untrue. We have always been brutal to our candidates, but this served a
purpose. We may not know what his policy on trade reform is, but we need to
know what kind of person he is for the unexpected issues that will come faster
and be more deadly than any moderator's questions. I think this is the purpose
debates serve. They are not some public policy review but a dissection of the
soul of someone who wants to be president. It is not necessarily a good one, or
always an accurate one. It is, however, why we have them.
The question may come up as to
who I think won the debate. My opinion on that is no better than anyone else's,
nor, as I pointed out, do I think it really matters. The winner of the debate
may or may not have persuaded enough voters of his virtue to be elected. But in
the end, our response to the debate is idiosyncratic. What moved me may not
have moved others. After all, the country appears divided down the middle on
this election, so obviously we are seeing different things. Therefore, who I
think won the debate is as irrelevant as who I think should be president.
Besides, there are more important questions than our own opinions on the
candidates. For me, one of those is trying to understand what we are doing when
we elect a president.
Scott Stewart, Stratfor,
25-10-2012
Related:
First Presidential Debate: Barack Obama x Mitt Romney
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