Hillary’s Foreign Policy Record Isn’t Much to Crow About

Unless the Benghazi scandal consumes her, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is virtually a shoo-in for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination if she wants it. And she’s outpolling her GOP rivals.

The question is: why?

It can’t be because she was a great secretary of State. She did travel more miles (956,733) to more countries (112) than any of her predecessors. She handled herself on public occasions with poise and dignity, speaking almost always in measured tones.

But what did she accomplish? Other than speaking forcefully for the rights of women — who are probably now more endangered than ever in the Muslim world — it’s hard to name a single foreign policy breakthrough that the Obama administration or its chief diplomat has achieved.

Palestinians and Israelis haven’t even been brought to the negotiating table, let alone moved toward peace. Russia and China are at least as hostile toward the United States as they were in 2008, and more assertive. Iran is closer to having a nuclear weapon. North Korea is more belligerent. Iraq is becoming an Iranian ally.

The “Arab Spring” is replacing pro-Western despots with anti-Western despots. We are about to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. And in Syria, either the brutal Assad regime will survive, an ally of Iran and Hezbollah, or the resistance, now dominated by Sunni jihadists, will win.

And then there is Benghazi, Libya. Gregory Hicks, the former No. 2 man in the Libyan embassy, testified that he called Clinton at 2 a.m. to report that the U.S. consulate was under terrorist attack and that his “jaw dropped” when Obama, Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice said that a video caused the riot. Now, he said, he’s been demoted for talking.

In 2016, Clinton will certainly be able to claim that she has more foreign policy experience than any of her Democratic or Republican rivals. But she won’t be able to say she achieved much of anything.

GOP Needs to Say ‘Yes’ More (Part II)

In part 1 of this post, I argued that the biggest question facing the GOP is what should it be for? Republicans have been relegated to the role of Scrooge while Democrats have been playing Santa when it comes to taxes and economic growth.

So, can the GOP find a way to play Santa again? It’s hard to do on the tax side because Obama has kept rates low for everybody but the top 1 percent and the GOP, fighting fiercely for the 1 percent, only magnifies its Scroogish image.

Actually, some bright conservative writers have proposed good ideas recently. Rich Lowry of National Review, writing in Politico last week, suggested that, in the politically entrepreneurial spirit of Kemp, the party come up with 10 ideas for promoting work in America, advancing welfare reform, replacing (not just obliterating) “Obamacare” and making college affordable.

AEI’s Ramesh Ponnuru, in The New York Times, suggested reducing payroll taxes on ordinary workers, expanding the child care tax credit and lowering health care costs by altering the tax break for health insurance by letting people pocket the money they save buying cheaper plans. Full story

GOP Must Transform From Scrooge to Santa (Part I)

George W. Bush played Santa on two fronts, cutting taxes and increasing spending. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Among the Republican Party’s many problems, perhaps the biggest is: what should it be for? Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush correctly pegged the issue in his Conservative Political Action Conference speech — “stop being the anti-everything party” — but didn’t have much to offer as an alternative.

The party has confronted this problem before and met it. It was encapsulated in 1976 by the brilliant, erratic journalist-activist Jude Wanniski in an essay, “Taxes and a Two-Santa Theory,” published in the long-defunct Dow Jones newspaper, National Observer, but available here thanks to historian-economist Bruce Bartlett.

Wanniski argued that Republicans had embraced the role of Scrooge while Democrats had the pleasure (and political benefit) of playing Santa Claus, using government to dispense goodies and redistribute income. Republicans, fixated on balanced budgets, either constantly just said “no” or, in those days, insisted on raising taxes to pay for the Democrats’ spending. In a battle between Santa Claus and Scrooge, Santa wins, he wrote. Full story

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

It’s four years, two months and millions of rancorous words too late, but could President Barack Obama’s outreach to congressional Republicans be the start of something big?

By big, of course, I mean serious efforts to reach a grand bargain on the national debt — followed, maybe, by further bargains on immigration and steps needed to get the economy working for people besides big bankers and investors in the stock market. Full story

State of American Politics: A Pessimist’s Lament

Longtime readers of my CQ Roll Call column, Pennsylvania Avenue, probably won’t be surprised by what follows — a lament about the state of politics in America from my moderate/centrist perspective. It’s adapted from a speech I gave in January at the Hillsboro Club in Florida. Welcome to the blog!

As any of you who ever watched “The McLaughlin Group” or Fox News will understand, I’m not only glad to be here, but to be anywhere where I can finish a sentence without getting interrupted.  Or shouted at, in the case of McLaughlin. Little did I know when I started on that show at its launch in 1982 that I was present at the beginning of the end of civil discourse in America … if not the beginning of the end of Western civilization.

By comparison, Fox News was mentally healthy — and, of course, fair and balanced. Full story