American Presidential Gaiatsu: "You are Pushing Us in the Direction We Need to Go"
In recent weeks, I have met very senior advisors for the Obama, Clinton, and McCain camps. In each case, the senior presidential aide was quite aware of critiques I had offered regarding a variety of foreign policy issues.
In the case of Obama, I've been critical of his recent triangulation on Israel/Palestine issues and his unwillingness to embrace at least the Bush administration 2001-2004 "status quo" in US-Cuba policy.
In the case of Hillary Clinton, I have been critical of her Cuba stand, her failure to mention Israel-Palestine in what her staff called Clinton's definitive foreign policy vision statement, and critical of her stand on the Beijing-hosted Olympic Games and her views about how to pursue better human rights conditions for people inside China, Tibet, and Darfur.
In the case of John McCain, whom I have admired and written positive treatments on many occasions at TPM Cafe and at The Washington Note, I part company on his approach to the inevitability of more wars in the Middle East, his glib embrace of bombing Iran, and his stand on a long-term deployment in Iraq.
John McCain's national security vision -- as it stands now -- will either require substantial tax increases to cover the military commitments he seems unable to extract his thinking from -- or a new military draft. Both will harm confidence of citizens in America and its future -- and hasten America's decline economically, politically, and strategically.
What has been quite strange is that in certain micro-policy areas, whether its Cuba, Israel-Palestine, or knocking back the Cheney wing of John McCain's divided foreign policy advisers, these senior political aides I spoke to all said, practically verbatim:
You are pushing us in the direction we need to go.
I'm still trying to get my head around the implications of this.
To some degree, it means that the campaigns -- and perhaps the candidates themselves -- aren't accepting full responsibility for his or her views. They perhaps want to be pushed. They want gaiatsu, a Japanese term meaning "external pressure".
During US-Japan trade dispute days, Japan frequently worked behind the scenes to solicit American trade negotiators to pressure the Japanese government to concede on some respective trade policy issue -- so that Japanese politicians could use the 'excuse' of American pressure to explain the seeming concession to its public. The fact is that Japanese politicians usually actually wanted to go in the direction that we were pressuring them; it was in their interests -- but politicians did not want to shoulder the responsibility.
To some degree, the franchises of diverse opinion that surround each candidate are going to be looking for outside agitants, ideologues and validaters to help bolster the internal policy case they are making to the potential president. For a refresher on the internal divide problem inside the campaigns, please read "Agonizing Over the Candidates and Who They Really Are."
When top tier advisers are looking for excuses for positions that they need to take -- then it raises serious questions about authenticity of the rhetoric we are hearing from all three -- Obama, Clinton and John McCain.
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note
You're not really surprised by this, are you?
There's an anecdote about FDR that I think I actually picked up from Digby, but which can also be found at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute:
Given a choice between this model, and that of the current administration, which has taken great pride in ignoring public opinion, I would pick the one with an ear to gaiatsu every time.
April 16, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's push that a step further. The gaiatsu model that Clemens cites is about elites using the excuse of external pressure to flout the popular will. What these advisers are saying is just the opposite - that if critics of their candidates' positions would like to see them change, they ought first to change popular opinion, and the candidates will happily follow its dictates. To put that more simply, they're saying: "Yes, but we live in a democracy." I think the FDR quote expresses the tension between leading and following perfectly.
April 16, 2008 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing — an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals — must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.
from Robert Scheer, The Man Who would Be Bush
April 16, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
You admire McCain?
The man votes for human torture !!!
Nice to know where your values are.
April 16, 2008 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain also jokes about killing people, but then again so does George Dubya, and at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner they think such jokes are funny. There is another RTCA Dinner tonight, but who can forget George W. in 2004:
George W. Bush made jokes about the missing WMDs in Iraq (that is, joked about the purported reason for which he had sent Americans to war and, for some, to death).
or McCain, in 2007:
when he answered a question on the campaign trail about Iran by jokingly singing, "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"
from a David Corn piece today
April 16, 2008 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
O goody - does this mean we can push them back into the progressive side of things? Really?
Tell me what to do...
April 16, 2008 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Start pumping steel, progressives. We have some pushing to do. We're going waaaaaaaaay back to the progressive side of center where we belong.
:)
April 16, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Steve.
In regards to McCain, there are some very alarming reports I've run across lately and hope that you could put your connections to use to verify.
I know you're not deeply into the weeds on things military and the ME, but if McCain is seriously contemplating "driving Hezbollah out of Lebanon" using our military assets, it could be a disaster on so many levels.....If this is truly McCain's plan, this would set alarms clanging among the knowledgeable/realists in FP and defense circles, regardless of political party:
McCain claims he can drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon
Sunday, 13 April, 2008 @ 6:44 PM
"Former alternate U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Walid Maalouf, quoted presidential candidate John McCain as pledging to 'drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon.'
The pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat also quoted Maalouf, an American citizen of Lebanese descent, as saying President George Bush has promised not to conclude any deals at the expense of the international tribunal that would try suspects in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.
The newspaper interviewed Maalouf in London on the occasion of publishing his new book on memories in Lebanon prior to immigrating to the United States.
Maalouf said he met McCain during the latter's campaign and he 'told me in answering a question: I'll drive Hizbullah out of Lebanon.'
McCain's Pledge to Israel
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post during his March trip to Israel, McCain said Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, and Lebanon's Hizbullah, both threaten the interests of the United States and the West in general.
"If Hamas, Hizbullah succeed here, they are going to succeed everywhere," he said.
"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the U.S., Israel and the West believe and stand for," he said.
'So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel,' the presumptive Republican presidential nominee added."
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/04/mccain_claims_h.php
Another report:
McCain Reportedly Pledges to Drive Hizbullah Out of Lebanon
"Walid Maalouf, the former alternate U.S. Representative to the United Nations, quoted Republican presidential candidate John McCain as pledging to "drive Hizbullah out of Lebanon."
The pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat also quoted Maalouf, an American citizen of Lebanese descent, as saying President George Bush has promised not to conclude any deals at the expense of the international tribunal that would try suspects in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.
The newspaper interviewed Maalouf in London on the occasion of publishing his new book on memories in Lebanon prior to immigrating to the United States.
Maalouf said he met McCain during the latter's campaign and he "told me in answering a question: I'll drive Hizbullah out of Lebanon."
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/0/B034FC726C6B5EF0C225742A004214D7?OpenDocument
Beirut, 13 Apr 08, 14:06
According to yet another Arab news source, Walid Maalouf repeated this claim:
Walid Maalouf: McCain will drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon
April 14, 2008
"The Kuwaiti daily As-Seyassah said that Lebanese lobbyist in Washington Walid Maalouf called on Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to resign from his position and open the way for the election of a new house speaker after having kept the parliament’s doors closed for more than a year.
Maalouf also called for the election of a new president to lead Lebanon out of its present crisis and restore it after 30 years of wars on its soil.
Maalouf, who served as America’s alternate representative to the UN General Assembly in 2003, and who is currently the head of USAID’s general diplomacy, said that Berri is responsible for the failure to elect a new president in Lebanon.
“The democracy Berri claims to be holding to is based on the constitution and on laws, and there are no preconditions to rebuilding the state, and there are no reasons justifying the closure of the parliament. This is something history has never known,” Maalouf said.
Maalouf also gave the Kuwaiti daily a copy of the official Lebanese diaspora vow, stating, “We, the diaspora Lebanese of all generations across all the continents of the world vow to be united in order to save Lebanon and work with democratic governments of the world to prevent Bashar Al-Assad from controlling Lebanon again. We promise our people not to back off until true freedom, sovereignty and independence are achieved.”
“Lebanon is a republic that cannot continue with the existence of corruption, militias, internal destabilization, regional interference, Palestinian camps, weapons and smuggling,” Maalouf said.
He also said that in July, he will send a diaspora delegation to Lebanon under the slogan “Solidarity with Lebanon – Elect a president.”
Maalouf added that US presidential candidate John McCain informed him that he will drive Hezbollah out of Lebanon.
-NOW Staff
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=38363
I can't stress enough how dangerous it would be if American forces were to be deployed on the ground in Lebanon. No one with a damn clue, including the IDF, thinks that Hezbollah can be driven anywhere by relying on missiles and/or airstrikes alone.
(I apologize for the full quotes, but googlenews searching is no longer bringing up any results using the appropriate keywords "walid maaloof" "mccain" and a google search that also includes the term "Hezbollah" no longer returns any hits. BTW, all of the above sources are pro-March 14 coalition publications.)
April 16, 2008 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why did you feel the need to qualify criticism of John McCain, yet felt no such compulsion in regards to Hillary or Barack? Is this the preferential treatment so ingrained in the press that I keep hearing about?
April 17, 2008 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink