GOP foreign policy debate on CBS
A couple of quick notes on this debate, which was itself “quick,” compressed as it was into only sixty minutes for the national television audience (with thirty minutes more online). The square-jawed CBS moderators were hilarious, although I fear that their humor was largely unintentional. They hit Herman Cain with a number of “gotcha” type questions (“Exactly how many troops would you deploy in Kandahar versus Mazar el-Sharif?” Alright, not quite but nearly.) but the surprise of the event for me was that Mr. Cain handled himself very well, all in all, in areas where he has previously shown weakness. He’s currently not my guy, for reasons already expressed, but neither is he ready to be consigned to the ash-heap of history.
Speaking of which, Texas Governor Rick Perry delivered his best debate performance so far. OK: that’s not saying much, but still. His assertion that communist China, for all of its growing economic power, lacks virtues and so is doomed in its current form, was insightful and pretty darned radical, but also, I think, pretty darned true. The fundamental immorality of what remains a centrally controlled tyranny is something we may tend to forget. It is (to use a term I usually hate to hear) unsustainable. If we instead presume that it is sustainable in its current form then I think we make a rather large strategic mistake, and a moral one too.
However, the bigger story coming out of the debate was Rick Perry’s promise that the foreign aid budget in his presidential administration would be brought down to zero; he maintained that the case would have to made, nation by nation, as to why any American dollars should be donated at all. It may have been the bigger story, and ridiculed by the usual suspects, but it’s hardly so radical. Why shouldn’t all U.S. foreign aid be re-evaluated in the light of the current economic crisis and in the light of a dramatically-changing world? In some cases America might be getting what it’s paying for, and in other cases it surely is not. Gingrich agreed: Why first write Egypt a check for three billion dollars as usual and only then start thinking about the level of aid? Why not think in advance of signing the check?
The attempt, by some, to turn this against Perry in terms of U.S. support for Israel is rather vain. Anyone who has studied the record would know that Perry is probably the most dedicated supporter of Israel in the race. But, as he allowed, even U.S. aid to Israel ought to be looked at in terms of whether it is delivering according to expectations.
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Newt Gingrich was in sparkling form as usual for these debates. His performance in so completely turning around the fortunes of his campaign based on how he does in these forums is, in no small way, amazing. You just cannot but love the moment in last night’s debate when the CBS moderator was inviting him, in a roundabout way, to lash into Mitt Romney, and Newt starts grinning long before the question is finished. He knows—and we who have been watching how he carries himself in these debates also know— that he already has the media guy utterly nailed to the wall. “No,” he answered, to the rising cheers in the audience. We’re not here to beat up on each other. We’re here to contrast ourselves with Barack Obama. Anybody on this stage would be a far superior president to Barack Obama.
Michele Bachmann deserves a mention for giving some excellent answers during this debate as well. Had she not invested too much of her energy earlier on in attacking her GOP competitors (in other words, had she taken a page from Newt’s playbook) her candidacy might not have imploded as it has. She crossed certain lines in those attacks, and did not come across as particularly likeable.
I believe that this debate likely affected the horse race in the following two respects: Newt Gingrich continued to improve his position as the next-most-likely alternative to Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry slightly but significantly improved his credibility in the wake of, er, recent difficulties.
