E.J., We Need to Talk Posted by Heather Hurlburt

The Washington Post's EJ Dionne is someone I really look up to.  But today he's just flat wrong.

the fact that so much of the debate concentrated on international relations reflects the imposition of a false high-mindedness that sees presidential-level discussions as serious only if they focus primarily on foreign policy. This throws off the balance in our politics.

Elsewhere in his piece, he draws an implicit contrast between the "lunch-bucket" issues that real Americans care about and the airy-fairy national security issues that the high-minded elite wants to discuss.

First off, EJ, the auto workers and nurses and child-care providers and taxi drivers I encounter every day here in the Midwest seem to care quite a lot about Iraq, terrorism and globalization.  Yes, they also care quite a lot about health care and jobs.

Second, the irony here is that the foreign policy elite of which I'm a card-carrying member is also unhappy with this debate -- because it's a stale repetition of political formulas which are carrying us further away from, not closer to, real progress in calming Iraq.  We "high-minded" types would like to talk about terrorism, human rights, genocide, rebuilding the US image, reforming the UN, creating a better trade policy and fighting global warming... just for starters.

We live in a world where those issues are intertwined with domestic "bread-and-butter issues:"  drug-resistant TB from Asia, small-town kids winding up on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, National Guards forming the frontline in homeland security, farmers struggling to work out the moral and practical costs of our farm supports, manufacturing jobs disappearing overseas, energy imperatives shifting underneath our wheels.

Yes, E.J. we do need more down-to-earth, honest discussion of all those issues:  but when you draw a false division between domestic and foreign, you're making it harder for progressives, not pointing the way forward.

(PS you're still my favorite Post columnist.)

Comments

[Reenie]

Hear, hear, Heather. And Dionne merely picks up on the distraction of the English language question and ignores the candidates' rather substantive discussion on immigration, which is about jobs and pay and secure borders and fighting international narcotrafficking (that's real--I refuse to play into the Bush terror-mongering around our southern border, which I think obscures real issues with terrorism).

But I have to give him credit for asking whether Joe Biden has to set himself on fire to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, as straight-shooting as he was Sunday night, I'm afraid the answer is yes.

[Dan Kervick]

I'm starting to wonder if top Democratic pundits and pols, including Dionne, received some kind of memo from Democratic Central Command to turn the debate back toward domestic policy issues and away from foreign policy. Over at TPM Cafe, for example, they have pretty much completely dropped America Abroad going back several months now, and have sponsored a string of debates and invited guest blogs at the site which seem to track about 80% to 90% toward domestic policy. They have been brusque and non-responsive following several posted inquiries about America Abroad, and it sure looks like a deliberate editorial decision from where I sit.

I worry about this, because back in 2002 I recall reading about the same ostrich-like insticts on the part of party poobahs. Tom Daschle was reported as saying that he wanted to get the war authorization issue off the table so that the party could get away from foreign policy, the Republicans' perceived strength, and turn back to domestic policy, the Democrats' perceived strength. So they pushed through a rubber-stamping of the authorization bill, an abdication which is partly responsible for our being in this f...ing mess to begin with.

With my suspicious mind, I descry the work of the Clinton machine in all this. The war issue has been a loser for HRC, and I'm sure they would love it if the talk all turned back to children, health, villages, etc. It's awfully odd that Dionne would complain about the balance of debate topics, when he knows very well that the Iraq issue turns up again and again when voters, including Democratic primary voters, are asked about the issues that matter most to them. I wonder if he is in the tank for someone.

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