MAKING HARVEY DENT LOOK CONSISTENT:

How High Are The Stakes In 2004?: Not as High As You Think. (Jonathan Rauch, Oct. 8, 2004, National Journal)

[A]ll presidential elections are important, and 2004 is no exception. But epochal? No.

In last week's presidential debate, what was striking was not how different the candidates sounded on foreign policy but how alike. President Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry agreed that the leading problems are the Iraq engagement, North Korean nukes, Iranian nukes, and loose nukes. Their main policy disagreement was on whether to add a bilateral component to current six-party talks with North Korea -- a tactical nicety. (Either way, the North Koreans are unlikely to disarm.) The only major point of contention was over who will do a better job managing the problems and commitments that the next president, whoever he is, will inherit.

Bush claims that his steadiness and vision can democratize the Islamic world, and that doing so will increase freedom and reduce terrorism. Kerry claims that his credibility and sensitivity will re-engage allies, thereby creating options that are closed to Bush. Both points have elements of truth, but the real-world contrast is not as sharp as the claims suggest.

Bush's "forward strategy of freedom" is a sound and overdue policy change. Kerry is not as outspoken about it, but he won't abandon it, if only because the old policy of supporting Arab tyrannies is a self-evident failure. For his part, Bush has pretty much run out of countries to democratize by force, and out of troops to do it with. Bush sees democratization in the Arab world as the work of decades, not years, and he is right. So the difference is mainly one of emphasis. Regardless of who is elected, democratization will remain -- as it long has been -- a polestar of U.S. foreign policy, and it will also remain slow going. [...]

Domestic policy is harder to foresee, at least if Bush is re-elected. Kerry touts a moderately ambitious plan to expand health care coverage, a policy that certainly distinguishes him from Bush; but, if victorious, he would face a wholly or partially Republican Congress, which would scale back his reforms, Republicanize them, or both. Congressional Republicans will also have something to say about Kerry's plans to lift Bush's partial ban on fetal stem-cell research, to raise taxes on corporations that go offshore, and so forth.

Kerry is an incrementalist by nature, cautious almost to a fault. Bush, by comparison, is the proverbial bull in the china shop. He hates what he calls "small ball" and seems to believe that a good offense is the only defense. He is capable of restraint -- for instance, in 2001, when China forced down an American spy plane -- but he seems most in his element when pile-driving an initiative that he thinks will redefine the national or global debate. For his second four years, he proposes a fundamental reform of Social Security (adding private accounts) and a fundamental tax reform (unspecified). No small ball there.

Democrats worry that, in a second term, Bush might do to them what Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair did to the British Conservative Party and what FDR did to the Republicans. Republican activists have a plan for hegemony: By introducing elements of personal choice and individual ownership into paternalistic programs such as Social Security, they hope to undercut popular demand for Big Government and thus for Democratic politicians.

Mr. Kerry has said that he would stop pushing democracy in the Middle East in favor of the (at least facade of) stability that authoritarianism affords. He favors tying the U.S. down in transnational institutions. He's said he would never privatize Social Security and opposes the whole host of Ownership Society measures. He favors the current tax system. He'd appoint liberal judges. And his election would delay for a few more years the ascent of the GOP to complete hegemony. But the election doesn't matter much? Apparently Mr. Rauch has never read this enlightening essay.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 9, 2004 11:34 AM