The Wayback Machine

Mitt Romney is supposed to stress the "Anglo-Saxon" heritage we share with Great Britain because President Obama doesn't appreciate the special relationship with have had. Romney vows to restore the "Anglo-Saxon" relations we have had. 


Where do you begin? It really sounds like a politician from the late 19th century or early 20th century in the United States, a country that had not experienced desegregation and an influx of refugees from around the world. It is a nativist vision perpetrated by the wealthiest. And, as a vision of foreign policy in the 21st century, it is ghastly.


Joe Biden took after Romney's VFW speech today saying it was a throwback to the Cold War. In particular, Romney went after Russia and China. But Biden pointed out that while the United States has serious problems with Russia, the administration did persuade them not to sell the most advanced radar to Iran and we negotiated a New Start treaty with Russia that was opposed by every Republican with the exception of Dick Lugar.


Romney also attacked the defense cuts, which the congressional Republicans agreed upon as part of their side of the debt deal and now they want to renege upon. But still defense spending doubled since 2000 anyway and it is time for it to be cut. However, Romney wants to increase it further. We still have a defense budget which is total to the next 30 countries combined. If you feel we are not secure, then that says more about your own feelings of insecurity and anxiety.


Chris Matthews was loaded for bear today going after Romney's war-mongering. Michael Steele looked like a deer in the lights because he could not answer one time that President Obama ever apologized for the United States. Matthews kept pressing him on why it is that every recent Republican President seems to have a new war on his mind.


In this case it is Iran. Romney simply repeated what Obama is already doing, which was the case throughout the primaries, but he also insisted that Iran not be allowed to enrich uranium at all. The only problem here is that the Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory and Israel is not does allow enrichment for civil purposes. Romney insisted he would prevent that. How?


You have to go back to the 1990s to understand Romney's foreign policy. Then a group, who would later become stalwarts in the George W. Bush administration, articulated a thing called the next American Century. I've known many of these people when I was younger. But remember that was over 16 years ago--three Presidents ago. Brazil, Indonesia, China , India have all become major international economic players. The Soviet Union is no more and it did not morph into that type of political player. But the thinking of these people never changed. They don't even recognize the growing economic power of Canada. 


Romney's first error was his recollection of a conversation with the new Australian Prime Minister who told him that America was one budget deal away from reversing decline. This is a man who is Left of President Obama and who said that the deal last year would have stopped everything but the GOP could not agree. Instead, Romney interpreted the comments a different way and the Australian government had to intercede and slap him down.


It is hard to grasp how inauthentic Romney's views are because he has never had skin in the game. His wealth is overseas. He pays a far smaller tax rate than the average American. None of his sons nor he or his father ever served in the armed forces. So there is no stake in war--there is no cost--human, financial or otherwise. And then there is this strange idea of the "white man's burden", a fawning of empire that is dangerous for the future of the United States. How else does one interpret the "anglo-saxon" legacy? Even Ike split from England over the Suez Canal. Are we going into Niall Ferguson's phantasies of an American empire supplanting England's?  We've lived through the Cold War, the Bosnian war, the Iraq and Afghanistan War. Does anyone believe this stuff other than the audience for Masterpiece Theater?


Part of this exercise is to exploit racial resentment of President Obama and invoke some worldview that the wealthy in this country unconsciously accept as their own. The problem for this country is that Barack Obama looks like the rest of the world and the country doesn't want to be a part of it. It gets back to Dick Cheney's one state nationalism, which can be unilaterally aggressive abroad or isolationist. Part of this stems from the racial views of foreign policy going back to Theodore Roosevelt. 


Whether this nationalism can sell after so many wars and a fatigue of war remains to be seen. But if triumphant again, it would spell doom for the United States because the world simply has moved on and doesn't accept our leadership uncritically.