Your humble blogger was innocently surfing the web yesterday when someone linked to Niall Ferguson's latest Newsweek column.  Now even though I've warned everyone -- repeatedly -- not to go to there, I made the mistake of clicking.  And this is what I saw: 

Everyone knows there could be a surprise before Nov. 6—a news story that finally makes up the minds of those undecided voters in the swing states and settles the presidential election.

[T]he only kind of surprise I can envisage is a foreign-policy surprise. And if the polls get any scarier for the incumbent, we might just have one.

Recently The New York Times--increasingly the official organ of the Obama administration—offered a tease. “U.S. Officials Say Iran Has Agreed to Nuclear Talks” ran the headline. In the story, the Times quoted unnamed officials as saying that one-on-one talks with Iran had been agreed to in “a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.”....

Not only that. If the White House could announce a historic deal with Iran—lifting increasingly painful economic sanctions in return for an Iranian pledge to stop enriching uranium—Mitt Romney would vanish as if by magic from the front pages and TV news shows. The oxygen of publicity—those coveted minutes of airtime that campaigns don’t have to pay for—would be sucked out of his lungs....

[There is] an alternative surprise—the one I have long expected the president to pull if he finds himself slipping behind in the polls. With a single phone call to Jerusalem, he can end all talk of his being Jimmy Carter to Mitt Romney’s Reagan: by supporting an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A few things: 

1)  Here's a pro tip:  if your foreign affairs observations represent a reprise of wacky Donald Trump musings, maybe it's best to take your ball and go home. 

2)  It's really kind of adorable that Ferguson thinks a foreign policy surprise would move that many voters.  Sorry, Niall, while presidents eventually pivot to foreign policy, it's not going to matter that much to undecideds right now. 

3)  If you want a foreign policy "tell" that Obama is in such serious straits that he's willing to gamble on a foreign policy initiative, there's a smaller-bore policy that would work better:  an opening to Cuba.  If Obama suggests that in the remaining week, it's a sign that:  a) he thinks Florida is a lost cause; and b) he is trying to shore up support in the midwest with agricultural concerns that would love a new export market. 

4)  The laziness involved in Ferguson's essay got me to thinking.... could this be the worst international affairs column of 2012?  How can we be sure?  I mean, to be fair, Ferguson cited a real New York Times story in the column -- that indicated an actual modicum of effort.  As I suggested last night, it might be an interesting exercise to create an NCAA-style bracket competition to determine the Worst International Affairs Essay of 2012.  Why shouldn't the foreign policy community have it's own version of the Razzies? 

To that end, I hereby ask commeters and the foreign affairs blogosphere to suggest candidate entries and possible rules for  this contest, as well as possible judges.  We'll see if there's enough momentum to add this contest to the coveted Albies. 

While I was getting drunk in Mexico, I see that the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs commissioned a poll of 600 "active voters" in Ohio and a similar amount in Florida to see what swing state voters think about foreign affairs.  In Politico, Graham Allison and Mike Murphy co-author their take:

It has long been accepted wisdom that Americans “don’t know much about history, don’t know much geography”— to recall the words of a golden oldie. So most folks managing, covering, or watching current campaigns will be surprised to learn that the majority of likely voters in the critical swing states of Florida and Ohio not only know more about the world outside, but care more, and want to know more than most candidates imagine.

Well.... sort of.  As Allison and Murphy acknowledge later on in the essay:

When asked what international issues they want to hear Romney and Obama speak to, the first responses are Iran’s nuclear weapons program and terrorism, far ahead of the global economy. Both in Ohio and Florida, by a margin of almost 2-1,voters believe the Arab Spring has affected American interests negatively, not positively. Voters have mixed views on U.S. global engagement and are split almost down the middle on isolationism. Given that Florida Republicans and independents overwhelmingly take the view the U.S. should pay less attention to problems overseas, two decidedly internationalist candidates will tread carefully.

But even those who oppose America taking a more active role in foreign affairs believe that understanding foreign affairs is essential because events abroad can increase the threat of terrorism or draw America into foreign wars. This is an especially relevant concern for these two states, where the majority have a relative who has served in the military. 

Now on the one hand, this poll makes it clear that isolationists are not know-nothings -- even those individuals who don't want foreign entanglements want to know more about the world.  Which is smart... because greater knowledge is a good way to avoid foreign entanglements. 

On the other hand, a peek inside the poll numbers makes it clear that this desire to avoid foreign entanglements is pretty strong.  When asked whether "it's best for the future of the country to be active in world affairs" or whether the U.S. "should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home," a plurality of Floridians (48% to 45%) prefer concentrating on the home front.  Intriguingly, Ohioians are more cosmopolitan, with 51% preferring an active role and only 42% opposed.  This is intriguing because the Midwest is often thought to be more isolationist than Florida -- and the poll shows that Floridians are much more well-travelled to Ohioians.  Still, the important thing is that compared to past polling on this subject, these are very strong numbers for isolationism -- or, dare I say, a more realpolitik perspective. 

The poll also shows that Americans are very wary about the Arab Spring:

Voters are pessimistic about the impact of Arab Spring on American interests. In Florida, 27% said it is good while 47% said it is not good and 25% are unsure. The numbers were similar in Ohio – 26% said good, 41% said not good, with 33% unsure.

Also, in terms of debate topics, the issues that piqued the interest of poll respondents were, in descending order, Iran, terrorism, Afghanistan, human rights, the global economy, China, Arab Spring, and Europe.  This must make Bob Schieffer pretty happy.  This is one of those cases when the wisdom of crowds doesn't hold however -- because these voters are pretty uninformed about foreign affairs (a strong majority of respondents believes that Japan possesses nuclear weapons).  

To be honest, however, the single-scariest data point in this survey is that  70% of Floridian responses said that "cable television news stations like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC" was a main source for their opinions about foreign affairs. 

As Fred Kaplan observed in Slate over the weekend, for the first time in a loooooooong time, the Democrats feel more secure on foreign policy and national security issues than the Republicans.  When John Kerry starts making derisive references to Rocky IV, you know something strange is going on.  As for Barack Obama, his convention acceptance speech was kind of middlin' -- except when he started talking about foreign policy.  As Kaplan noted: 

President Obama was even more casual in what can fairly be called, at least on these issues, his contempt for the Republican nominee. Romney’s depiction of Russia as America’s “number-one geostrategic foe” reveals that he’s “still stuck in a Cold War mind-warp,” Obama said—adding, in a reference to Romney’s disastrous trip to England this summer, “You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally.”

Romney and Ryan “are new to foreign policy,” Obama said, barely containing a smirk. Yes, Obama was once new to it as well, though not as new—he’d at least served actively on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he picked a running mate, Joe Biden, who was seasoned. The more pertinent point the Democrats were making at their convention, though, is that Obama is not remotely new now.

Now, Peter Feaver will dissent, but short of another terrorist attack he's not going to move public opinion on this issue:  every head-to-head poll has given Barack Obama a decided advantage on foreign policy and national security.  Every one.   

The thing is, I've stipulated over and over than Americans don't care all that much about foreign policy. So one has to wonder whether this really matters.  It's an election about the economy, and there's no way to sugarcoat the anemic job growth as of late.  So this foreign policy advantage won't amount to much, right? 

Probably....  but there might be two ways in which foreign policy might affect the electoral outcome.  The first, which as been playing out over the last year or so, is that Mitt Romney's relative competency on foreign policy has declined dramatically -- to the point where voters might believe that he's simply "below the bar."   

Let's roll the clock back a year.  When Romney was in the GOP primary squaring off against foreign affairs neophytes like Herman Cain and Rick Perry, it was pretty easy for him to look competent by comparison.  Romney had gone to the bother of collecting foreign policy advisors and produced a real, live foreign policy white paper.  Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich obsessed about EMPs.  Compared to his GOP opponents, Romney seemed competent by comparison. 

Since the primary season ended, however, Romney has badly bungled the foreign policy side of his campaign.  Whoever was wrangling the foreign policy advisors couldn't get them to shut up when they felt on the outs, so they kept on leaking -- sometimes to flacks who couldn't quite connect the dots.  Romney's public pronouncements seemed logic-free and designed to play to the GOP base.  Then came July's foreign trip, during which Romney managed to bungle what should have been some lovely photo-ops.  During and immediately after this trip, by the way, Obama doubled his lead over Romney in the Real Clear Politics Poll Average. His VP choice, Paul Ryan, has even less foreign policy experience than Romney -- and no, voting for the Iraq war doesn't count.  Finally, at the RNC, Romney failed to talk about the troops in Afghanistan, or veterans' issues, or war more generally -- the first time a GOP nominee has failed to do so since 1952. 

At the same time that Romney's foreign policy "performance" has declined, the quality of his competition has improved.  Romney isn't running against a former pizza exec now; he's running against a sitting president who oversaw the end of the war in Iraq, the successful prosecution of the Libya intervention, a rebalancing of American foreign policy towards the Pacific Rim, and the death of Osama bin Laden.    

The trajectory matters because it calls Romney's basic competency on this issue into question, and because it complicates his fall campaign.  No, voters don't care a lot about foreign policy, but they do want to be comfortable that the guy they vote for can handle the commander-in-chief test.  A year ago, Mitt Romney would have cleared that hurdle with the American public.  Now I'm not so sure.    

Could the Romney campaign fix this?  Sure, they could criticize the president and refine their own positions.  But every day the Romney campaign tries to repair the damage is a day they're not talking about the economy.  And if voters start thinking about secondary issues, including foreign policy, then Romney could lose some votes. 

So the competency question is the first reason foreign policy might matter in this election.  I'll blog about the second reason... oh... about 26 hours from now. 

The news that Mitt Romney is planning a overseas trip/foreign policy address has led to some... interesting reactions among libertarians/realists.  Even before the trip was announced, Daniel Larison thought it was a bad idea for Romney to focus on foreign policy at all.  After the trip was trial-ballooned, Larison still thought it was a bad idea -- as did Justin Logan at the Cato Institute (guest-posting on Steve Walt's blog). 

As someone who thought this wasn't the worst notion in the world, it's worth reviewing their objections.  In toto:

1)  Romney's neoconservative-friendly foreign policy views are unpopular in both the United States and many of the countries on Romney's itinerary -- so there's no upside.  As Larison puts it:  "Romney’s hawkish critics haven’t fully grasped that foreign policy has become a weakness for the GOP over the last six years, so it makes no sense to them that it might help their presidential candidate to avoid talking about it."

2)  This is an election about the economy, and any energy Romney devotes to foreign policy is wasted.  As Logan notes, "Sometimes foreign-policy wonks have trouble divorcing what they are interested in from what voters are interested in.... Unless I'm missing something big here, every minute Romney spends overseas is a minute he's spending away from winning the election."

3)  Even if (1) and (2) do not apply, there is very little political upside to be gained from visiting other countries.  Larison goes through the various possible upsides for a challenger to go abroad, but doesn't find them terribly convincing. 

So, how to respond?  First, let's parse this out into two questions.  First, should candidates talk more about foreign policy because it's good for democracy?  Second, is it in their own political interests to talk more/visit other countries? 

I hope Larison and Logan would agree that, political imperatives aside, it would be A Good Thing for the Country if presidential candidates talked more about foreign policy.  Presidents have much more leeway in conducting foreign policy than domestic policy.  They wind up spending about half their time and energy as president on foreign policy.  Given its importance to the office, the fact that it's not talked about all that much during the campaign is kinda problematic.  It might be worthwhile for major party candidates to openly discuss/think about their foreign policy views just a bit.

Now, on whether it's politically savvy for presidential candidates to talk about this stuff, I largely agree with Logan and Larison.  Voters don't care about foreign policy.  In Romney's case, however, there are a few reasons why a summer foreign policy trip makes some sense. 

First, er, it's the summer.  Logan is correct that foreign policy wonks tend to confuse what interests them with what interests the public, but so do campaign advisors.  The undecideds aren't dwelling on politics at the moment, and likely won't do so until after the Summer Olympics are over.  All these peple will do is process the occasional headline.  If Romney has to choose between this headline and ones about foreign policy, he might prefer the latter. 

Second, at least one of his foreign policy trips will play well domestically.  Larison and Logan grumble about it, but they both appear to acknowledge that the Israel leg of the trip would likely fire up the evangelical base and peel off disaffected Jews from Obama's coalition.  If he's going all the way to Israel, then a few more days/stops make some sense.

Third, and finally, Romney dug his own grave on this issue.  In op-ed after op-ed, Romney has relied on blowhard rhetoric and a near-total absence of detail to make his case.  In doing so, Romney is the one who has sowed the doubts about his foreign policy gravitas in the first place.  If his campaign manages to produce a successful foreign policy speech/road trip, he can dial down one source of base criticism -- and focus again on the economy in the fall.  And eliminating base citicism matters domestically -- the media tends to magnify within-party critiques as being more newsworthy. 

The best criticism is Larison's contention that the actual content of Romney's foreign policy vision might not go down so well with the American people.  This might be true, but it might not be.  The thing is, no one is entirely sure what Romney thinks about foreign policy.  Maybe his op-eds were nothing but rhetorical bluster -- as campaign musings about foreign policy tend to be.  It's also possible/likely that whatever foreign policy speeches he delivers in the next month or so wouldn't match his actions once in office.  As I noted last year, however, there is value in having a presidential candidate demonstrate "generic foreign policy knowledge." 

I suspect both Larison and Logan would prefer a foreign policy in which the United States doesn't aim to do as much abroad, allowing the country to retrench and revitalize the domestic economy.  That's a compelling argument (and, actually, one that President Obama made in his first few years of office).  Just because Romney might disagree with that approach, however, is no reason for him to clam up on foreign affairs this summer.  As a democracy, we're entitled to hear about how he thinks about these issues.  Politically, a well-executed foreign policy trip won't net him a lot of votes, but it would cauterize a festering politcal wound and allow him to pivot back to the economy. 

Honestly, my dear readers, I've been trying to pivot away from deconstructing Mitt Romney's foreign policy musings.  After a half-year of watching GOP presidential debates and then reading Romney's blinkered musings on various hot spots, I think this horse has pretty much been beaten to death. 

Except that, with Romney's NATO Chicago Tribune op-ed this past weekend, I fear he and his campaign have crossed the line from really stupid foreign policy pronouncements to logically contradictory ones. 

Here's how Romney's op-ed opens and closes:

NATO has kept the peace in Europe for more than six decades. But today, the alliance is at a crossroads. It is time to speak candidly about the challenges facing the United States and our allies and how to rise to them.

In a post-Cold War world, territorial defense of Europe is no longer NATO's one overriding mission. Instead, the alliance has evolved to uphold security interests in distant theaters, as in Afghanistan and Libya. Yet through all the changes to the global landscape, two things have remained constant about the alliance. For it to succeed, it requires strong American leadership. And it also requires that member states carry their own weight....

At this moment of both opportunities and perils — an Iranian regime with nuclear ambitions, an unpredictable North Korea, a revanchist Russia, a China spending furiously on its own military, to name but a few of the major challenges looming before us — the NATO alliance must retain the capacity to act.

As president, I will work closely with our partners to bolster the alliance. In that effort, words are not enough.

I will reverse Obama-era military cuts. I will not allow runaway entitlement spending to swallow the defense budget as has happened in Europe and as President Obama is now allowing here.

I really like his first paragraph... and then we run into a whole mess of problems.  In ascending order of importance:

1)  What the f**k does NATO have to do with either North Korea or China?  Seriously, I get that NATO has expanded to out-of-theater operations, but does anyone seriously think that German forces are going to be deployed along the Pacific Rim?  I didn't think so.   

2)  In what way is Russia "revanchist"?  Oh, sure, the Russians are chatty, but does anyone seriously believe that, right now, Moscow poses any kind of security threat to the rest of Europe?  One semi-competent victory over a former Soviet repiblic does not constitute revanchism, and swelling domestic discontent and the Mother of All Demographic Crunches suggests that Vladimir Putin will be way to preoccupied with the problems within his own borders to be much of a problem in Europe. 

3)  There's an oldie but a goodie of an article on NATO by Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser entitled "An Economic Theory of Alliances." Romney's advisors should take a gander.  The basic point is that in an alliance containing a single superpower, the rest of the alliance members will tend to free-ride off of the hegemonic actor.  In essence, Romney's op-ed doubles down on that free-rider logic.  If Romney commits to boosting U.S. defense spending, exactly what incentive does this give our NATO allies to boost theirs? 

4)  So Romney wants to "speak candidly about the challenges facing the United States and our allies and how to rise to them"?  OK...  and apparently the way for NATO to face these challenges is to "work closely with our partners to bolster the alliance."  That, and reverse Obama's defense cuts. 

To which I have to say:  that's it?!  Really?!  If this is Romney speaking candidly, then this SNL skit is more true-to-life than I realized. 

Am I missing anything?  Seriously, am I?  I don't like it when a guy with a 50/50 chance of being president in January 2013 has abandoned the Logic Train. 

Ross Douthat had a great column to start the new year, offering his own interpretation on the Ron Paul phenomenon.  His last few paragraphs:

There’s often a fine line between a madman and a prophet. Perhaps Paul has emerged as a teller of some important truths precisely because in many ways he’s still as far out there as ever.

The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised. Yet politicians of both parties are required, by the demands of partisanship, to embrace the convenient lie that our problem can be pinned exclusively on the other side’s elites — as though both liberals and conservatives hadn’t participated in the decisions that dug our current hole.

In this climate, it sometimes takes a fearless crank to expose realities that neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge.

In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Paul has been the only figure willing to point out the deep continuities in American politics — the way social spending grows and overseas commitments multiply no matter which party is in power, the revolving doors that connect K Street to Congress and Wall Street to the White House, the long list of dubious policies and programs that both sides tacitly support. In both election cycles, his honest extremism has sometimes cut closer to the heart of our national predicament than the calculating partisanship of his more grounded rivals. He sometimes rants, but he rarely spins — and he’s one of the few figures on the national stage who says “a plague on both your houses!” and actually means it.

Obviously it would be better for the country if this message weren’t freighted with Paul’s noxious baggage, and entangled with his many implausible ideas. But would it be better off without his presence entirely? I’m not so sure.

Neither prophets nor madmen should be elected to the presidency. But neither can they safely be ignored (emphases added).

Conor Friedersdorf and Glenn Greenwald take a similar position.  Greenwald in particular argues that Paul's positions on foreign policy/national security/civil liberties are so much better than the bipartisan consensus view that Paul's tacit approval of those odious newsletters should be heavily discounted.  As Greenwald puts it, progressives who don't support Paul must apparently accept the following preference ordering:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

I'm of two minds about this line of argument.  On the one hand, there is no denying that Paul's worldview has helped him to launch a powerful critique on American foreign policy.  This can't just be dismissed as "yes, he was right on Iraq, but..." either.  As Douthat, Friedersdorf and Greenwald observe, Paul really is the only candidate to bring up these issues not named Gary Johnson or Jon Hunstman.  His hypothesis that the United States has invited some blowback by overly militarizing its foreign policy cannot be easily dismissed.  

Think of it this way:  Paul is a hedgehog.  He knows One Big Thing and uses it to construct his worldview.  We know from Philip Tetlock that hedgehogs are less likely to be right when making predictions than foxes -- those people who know a little about a lot of things. Hedgehogs outperform foxes is in getting big macro-consequential events correct, however.  We tend to ignore such predictions, however, because hedgehogs usually lack the emotional intelligence necessary to persuade nonbelievers.  I  want Paul banging on about the dangers of excessive government intrusion and overexpansion.  That's not nothing.

Here's the thing, though -- precisely because Paul is a hedgehog, he brings other less-than-desirable qualities to the table.  I don't think his intriguing take on foreign policy and civil liberties can be separated from, say, his batshit-insane views about the Federal Reserve.  In fact, let me just edit Greenwald's proposed tradeoff so that it's a bit more accurate:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have some Muslim children inadvertently die by covert drones and cluster bombs, and a disproportionate percentage of America’s minorities imprisoned for no good reason, and the CIA taking action with minimal checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers and lots of rhetoric & covert action against Iran that makes Glenn Greenwald hyperventilate in exchange for avoiding a complete and total meltdown of the global economy due to the massive deflation that would naturally follow from a re-constituted gold standard. 

I don't like this choice, but it's an easy one to make.    

To paraphrase both Douthat and This is Spinal Tap, there's a fine line between prophetic and crazy.  I would posit that only someone who fanatically accepted this entire worldview would have been capable of inspiring the Ron Paul movement.  Only those leaders with sufficient levels of ideological zeal to never compromise, never bend on principle, until they eventually reach a position of power are able to foment revolution.  This kind of zeal requires a singular worldview that might contain some worthwhile elements but is likely also based on some axioms or articles of faith that seem a little nuts and makes the person wrong an awful lot of the time.  These kinds of leaders, precisely because they were in the political wilderness, will tend to be supremely convinced in their own rightness if they ever win power. 

Ron Paul is great at affecting the marketplace of ideas.  He would be worse than Newt Gingrich if he actually became  president, however.  The great presidents -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- knew the when to compromise and when to stand firm, when to lead public opinion and when to follow it.  They were, in other words, great politicians.   The presidents who simply knew they were right on everything and resisted compromise -- Jackson, Wilson, Bush 43 -- tended towards the disastrous.  Paul would be part of the latter group. 

So if Ron Paul wants to influence the debate, that's good.  He raises important questions about important issues.  He's also wrong about some really important issues and therefore should be kept away from the presidency. 

Fortunately, as James Hohmann's Politico story suggests today, Paul and his supporters seem to care about the former more than the latter: 

As much as anything else, [Paul's] pitch centers on sending a message.

“This is ideological,” he said here late Friday night at his last campaign stop of 2011. “So it isn’t a numbers game. It has to do with determination.”

He paraphrased a Samuel Adams quote, saying, “It doesn’t take a majority to prevail. It takes an irate, determined minority keen on starting the brushfires of liberty in the minds of men.”

“So in many ways, it’s a political revolution to change these ideas, but it’s an intellectual revolution,” Paul explained, wrapping up a nearly hourlong speech. “It’s a change in ideas about economic policy, understanding our traditions about foreign policy, understanding monetary policy. This is where we’re making progress. This is where we have advanced so much over the last couple decades and even in the last four years.”...

Many of his die-hard supporters see him more as an alarm-sounding Paul Revere than a Founding Father.

“I would say its 10 percent campaign, 90 percent a movement,” said Quaitemes Williams, a 26-year-old nursing student who drove from Dallas to volunteer for the full week before the caucuses. “Once you’ve seen the light, you can never go back to the dark. Once you learn about the Federal Reserve and foreign policy, you can’t go back to thinking in the right-left dichotomy.” (emphasis added)

That last quotation, by the way, is part of what I find problematic about the Paul movement.  The revolutionary leader worries me -- but the Jacobin followers scare the ever-living crap out of me.