FSB Author Article
Do We Have to Talk About the Lapel Pins Again?
By Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle,
Authors of The Voter's Survival Kit, a series of election guides from PublicAgenda.org and the book Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis
When
it comes to international issues, a lot of Americans aren't on top of
the details. In 2007 only 36 percent of Americans could name Vladimir
Putin as the leader of Russia, although maybe he's raised his profile
here recently by pummeling Georgia into the ground. Let's not
even speculate about the number of Americans who initially thought
there were Russian armies headed to Macon. Presumably that's been
cleared up by now.
But since so much of the voting public is so hazy on the details of
foreign policy, campaign debates about it often nose-dive into fights
over which candidate is "stronger" and which is more 'patriotic."
Can we just stop it now? Let's just stipulate that Senator McCain and
Senator Obama are both plenty strong. A spineless person doesn't
endure years in a prisoner-of-war camp and go on to thrive in a
highly-regarded career in public life. A weak person doesn't rise up
from humble beginnings to head up the Harvard Law Review and become a
senator and candidate for president of the United States. It just
doesn't happen.
And how they've lived their lives suggests, to us at least, that
they're both very patriotic. They may have gone about it in different
ways, but they have both chosen lives of service to the country.
Senator McCain saw combat in the military. Senator Obama passed on a
lucrative law career to become a community organizer helping the
jobless. These decisions show that these two men care about their
country, that they're both willing to set aside personal gain to
protect and enrich the lives and hopes of fellow citizens. As
Americans, we should be proud of them both.
OK. We have two strong, patriotic men running for president. And most
Americans (let's be frank here) probably aren't going to follow
nitty-gritty discussions over which countries should be in NATO and
which shouldn't. So, does that mean talking about the country's
foreign policy in this election season is a non-starter? Should we just
check it off the list and let the professionals handle it?
We don’t think so. In fact, we think there are some extremely
important questions the two candidates could and should be talking
about -- ones that don’t require the average voter to bone up on
historical relations between the Russians and Ukraine or be on top of
the operations of the World Trade Organization..
Maybe the candidates could talk about some questions like these:
Is the U.S. striking the right balance between using its military power
and using diplomacy in terms of its dealings around the world? Why or
why not?
What makes the U.S. secure? Military strength? Economic strength?
Top-notch intelligence? Having close allies? Other areas? What do you
plan to do to insure that we're strong in the areas that you consider
most important?
What is a smart, effective strategy for fighting terrorism aimed at the
U.S. and our people? Do we have it now, or do we need to make some
changes? What are they?
Are we putting too much or too little emphasis on working with other
countries? Are there places where we need to work harder to get
international cooperation, even if we don't get to do everything our
own way? What are they? Are there issues that are best addressed by the
U.S. acting in our own way and in our own time? What are those?
As a country, are we striking the right balance between having a strong
foreign policy versus working on issues here at home? Would you put
more emphasis on our role abroad or less? Tell us why?
These are all questions of national priorities and strategy -- things
voters can and should be able to make judgments on without getting a
master's degree in international relations. These are
fundamental choices the next president will have to make, and the
public ought to know how the two candidates would approach them.
But we're not so optimistic that questions like these will come up in
the debates. Based on what's admired in the news biz today, the
moderators may plan to invest their time seeing if they can get one of
these strong, patriotic men -- one of whom will be our president -- to
confuse the Sunnis and Shiites or perhaps slip up on some dictator's
name. Or maybe they'll want to get back to the lapel pins. That's a
real national security issue for you.
©2008 Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle
Author Bio
Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle are lead authors of The Voter's Survival Kit, a series of election guides from Public Agenda and the book Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis (HarperCollins, 2008). Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to helping citizens tackle tough issues. The Survival Kit is available at www.publicagenda.org.