For the record, I don't think Herman Cain is stupid.  I do think he's willfully ignorant about anything to do with foreign policy however.  If that wasn't manifestly obvious prior to this weekend, please watch the following conversation between Cain and the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal editorial board regarding Libya: 

I have a personal preference that ignoramuses should be drummed out of presidential politics as quickly as possible, but that was just painful to watch.  Needless to say, I don't think the boning up is helping all that much. 

I don't care if this man is leading the polls in Iowa, or is still running a strong second (or a weak third) in the national polls.  I suspect he's on the downside of his popularity bubble -- and for the sake of my own sanity, I just can't pay any more attention to Herman Cain's foreign policy views. 

There's a mercy rule in Little League, and I'm applying it here -- unless and until Herman Cain surges back in the polls again, or manages to muster something approaching cogency in his foreign policy statements, there's no point in blogging about him anymore.  I can only pick on an ignoramus so many times before it feels sadistic. 

I've whored mingled enough with the magazine world to understand that publishing "best/worst" lists are fun and engaging.  Some choices will be universally acknowledged, others will provoke controversy and debate, and so forth.  Lists are always going to engage the readers.  It's almost impossible to get them wrong. 

I bring this up because The Atlantic's list of the best and worst foreign policy presidents of the past century is really, really wrong. 

Democracy Arsenal's Michael Cohen cobbled together the list.  Here are his criteria: 

After reaching out to host of historians, foreign policy experts, academics and various think tankers here's one stab at answering a question which, in many respects, has no right answer. How you choose the best and worst foreign policy President depends in large measure on what values inform your vision of what a good foreign policy looks like. If you're a foreign policy idealist, Wilson would seem pretty good; a foreign policy realist; you might cast a vote for George H.W Bush or even Richard Nixon. If you prefer your presidents to talk tough, Harry Truman might be your man; if you prefer a more modest and less partisan figure, Dwight Eisenhower might float your boat.

As my list suggests, I tend to lean toward the more restrained, pragmatic realists who are suspicious about the use of force. Conversely, I'm more wary of not only the idealistic and ideologically driven presidents, but also those who use foreign policy, most destructively, as a tool of domestic politics.

OK, fair enough.  Here's his list: 

The Five Best Presidents:  1) FDR; 2) Dwight Eisenhower; 3) George H.W. Bush; 4) Ronald Reagan; 5) John F. Kennedy

The Five Worst Presidents:  1) LBJ; 2) Jimmy Carter; 3) Woodrow Wilson; 4) Harry Truman; 5) Richard Nixon. 

I'll let Tom Ricks rebut the JFK assessment on his own blog.  I'll let my readers make other objections -- and there are many ones to make -- with most of he list.  My problem is with the assessment of Harry Truman as, somehow, one of the five worst foreign policy presidents of the last century. 

Here's Cohen's explanation -- let's do this by paragraph, shall we? 

Harry Truman has in the nearly 50 years since he left the White House grown significantly in the estimation of both the public and many historians. To be sure, he deserves enormous credit for protecting and stabilizing Western Europe with the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO. These are signal achievements but as historians from Robert Dallek and Walter Lafeber to Fredrik Logevall have suggested there is a pretty significant downside to Truman's presidency as well.

One must stop here or a second and admire Cohen's ability to glom most of Truman's foreign policy accomplishments into a single sentence.  That takes some doing.  One could have at least noted that in the span of five years Truman and his foreign  policy advisors created pragmatic institutions that not only withstood the Cold War but prospered even after it ended.  Nope, nothing on that point.  That takes some serious doing. 

OK, let's move onto Truman's alleged defects:  

First there was Korea. An impulsive response to a cross-border attack that re-shaped American foreign policy. It was the final nail in the coffin of the more modest containment strategy proposed by George Kennan and by default enshrined the notion that the US had a responsibility to contain Communism wherever it showed its fangs.  But while the decision to go to war can be considered a debatable one; the failure in rein in Douglas MacArthur's push to the Yalu River, which triggered a Chinese intervention is a disaster that can't be washed away (even by Truman's later decision to fire the general). Considering that more than 20 million North Koreans continue to live in terrible hardship today because of that decision only compounds the mistake (emphasis added).

Why yes, that's so true.  Had Truman not decided to respond in force in Korea, there wouldn't be 20 million North Koreans living in terrible hardship -- there would be at least 60 million Koreans living in terrible hardship. 

Seriously, this line of reasoning makes no sense to me.  I understand but strongly disagree with the logic that intervening in Korea was a mistake.  I understand and kinda agree with the contention that crossing the 38th parallel was exceedingly costly in terms of blood and treasure.  I simply can't understand, however, the argument that had the U.S. not made that push, North Korea would have evolved differently.  Would Kim-Il Sung have abandoned juche if MacArthur hadn't tried for the Yalu? 

Speaking of MacArthur, you can't acknowledge Truman's failure to rein him in without also acknowledging that by firing MacArthur, Truman cemented civilian control over the military just as the size of the U.S. military was reaching a new high. 

Onward!!

Beyond Korea, the Truman Doctrine and its declaration that it was the "policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures" laid the groundwork for the limitless definition of US national interests that unfolded over the next 60 years. As Kennan would later note, it was one thing to contain Communism in Europe (a goal on which Truman succeeded). It was quite another to broaden that goal to the rest of the world. There is, as a result, a straight line between Truman's foreign policy choices and the war in Vietnam.

Right, this is why Eisenhower felt compelled to intervene in Vietnam during Dien Bien Phu -- oh, wait, as Cohen points out in his Eisenhower write-up, he did the exact opposite of that.  I don't buy straight-line arguments that take two decades to play out.   

Then there was Truman's use of anti-Communist rhetoric for political advantage that turned what might have been a balance of power, geo-political clash into an ideological one. This, of course, also helped to politicize the Cold War in the United States and heightened the issue of anti-Communism. Indeed, few Presidents more flagrantly used foreign policy as a political punching bag as frequently as Truman.

I'd be more charitable towards this point if Cohen hadn't also said that Eisenhower "used Cold War fears to push for national highway system and more money for higher education, two smart national security investments."  When is using foreign policy fears at home good and when is it bad, exactly?  Based on Cohen's list, I can't tell. 

Finally, ask yourself a counter-factual: how would the Cold War have unfolded if FDR had lived out his fourth term, rather than having the inexperienced Truman become the leader of the Free World? It's not hard to imagine that the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, so deftly handled by FDR during WWII, would have been minimized and a less militarist and dangerous conflict might have emerged. At the very least, as Robert Dallek points out even if superpower, ideological conflict between the US and Soviet Union was inevitable, Truman never really sought to find an alternative (emphasis added).

Again, I'm not sure what to make of this.  First, Cohen acknowledged that FDR "sold out the Eastern Europe countries at Yalta."  Does he believe that FDR would have somehow been able to repulse Stalin in Iran, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere without a Cold War -- or do those countries not matter? 

Second, if the bipolar distribution of power made superpower conflict inevitable, why exactly should Truman be blamed for not dickering around with alternatives that would have crashed and burned?  According to this logic, Truman is one of the five worst foreign policy presidents of the last century because he failed to pursue unfeasible options.  I'm sorry, but clearly I don't get it. 

In his blog post explaining the list, Cohen acknowledges that: 

I'm probably far too generous to John F. Kennedy, who makes the best list, and far too harsh to Richard Nixon, who makes the worst list. This is a pretty fair critique and if I had my druthers I'd put both men somewhere in the middle, but the need for editorial symmetry was too strong!

Fair enough -- but I'm sorry, listing Harry Truman as one of the five-worst foreign policy presidents is absurd. 

Am, I missing anything? 

Ever since I announced the Trumpies, I've been deluged with tweets and e-mails asking if  this flub or that blunder or the other mistake in New York culinary etiquette  merits a Trumpie nomination.  In keeping with the high quality of the Trumpie brand, however, a nomination cannot be earned for simple malapropisms, pizza-eating faux pas, or errors on non-foreign policy topics ("A Trumpie -- the foreign policy mistakes of royalty"). 

To repeat -- a Trumpie is only earned when the candidate or a kep foreign policy supporter demonstrates willful, assertive ignorance on U.S. foreign policy or world politics.  Which brings me to U.S. House Representative Paul Ryan.

Ryan is starting to act like a presidential candidate.  The chairman of the House Budget Committee delivered a foreign policy speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society last week, leaking the text to The Weekly Standard no less.  After that speech, other commentators have made numerous claims that Ryan deserves multiple Trumpie nominations.  Let's review the charges. 

Jonathan Chait argues that Ryan deserves a nom for making the sly charge that Barack Obama rejected American exceptionalism.  Here's the passage Chait quotes on this point:

There are very good people who are uncomfortable with the idea that America is an “exceptional” nation....

Today, some in this country relish the idea of America’s retreat from our role in the world. They say that it’s about time for other nations to take over; that we should turn inward; that we should reduce ourselves to membership on a long list of mediocre has-beens.

This view applies moral relativism on a global scale. Western civilization and its founding moral principles might be good for the West, but who are we to suggest that other systems are any worse? – or so the thinking goes.

Instead of heeding these calls to surrender, we must renew our commitment to the idea that America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen; a country whose devotion to free enterprise has lifted more people out of poverty than any economic system ever designed; and a nation whose best days still lie ahead of us, if we make the necessary choices today.

Chait argues: 

Ryan is referring to, without explicitly saying so, a widespread conservative claim. In April 2009, a reporter asked Obama if he believed in American exceptionalism. Obama began by citing objections to the concept before endorsing it. 

Chait is correct that the 2009 Obama speech demonstrates quite clearly that the president believes in American exceptionalism, and that numerous conservatives have taken delight in willfully misreading it.  The thing is, the text of Ryan's speech far from clear in asserting this claim.  The insinuation is there, but Ryan just refers to "very good people."  He could be talking about Obama -- but he could very well be talking about my FP colleague Steve Walt for all its specificity.  This is politically savvy, but not a display of assertive ignorance.  So, no, no Trumpie nomination for that. 

But wait -- there's more accusations!!  Eunomia's Daniel Larison thinks Ryan deserves a Trumpie for this section: 

 [O]ur fiscal problems are real, and the need to address them is urgent. But I’m here to tell you that decline is not a certainty for America. Rather, as Charles Krauthammer put it, “decline is a choice.”

It is hard to overstate the importance of this choice. In The Weary Titan, Aaron Friedberg–one of the founders of the Hamilton Society–has shown us what happened when Britain made the wrong choice at the turn of the 20th century.

At that time, Britain’s governing class took the view that it would be better to cede leadership of the Western world to the United States. Unfortunately, the United States was not yet ready to assume the burden of leadership. The result was 40 years of Great Power rivalry and two World Wars.

This recounting of history prompts Larison to write: 

I have not read this book. Despite that, I am fairly confident that Ryan is describing its argument incorrectly. For one thing, the British governing class between 1895 and 1905 did not “take the view” that “it would be better to cede leadership of the Western world” to the United States. This was the time of Salisbury’s government when the British were as overconfident and aggressive in their empire-building as ever.

Well.... I have read parts of The Weary Titan, and both Ryan and Larison make valid points here.  Friedberg does advance the argument in his book that British foreign policy elites voluntaily ceded aspects of their hegemony to other actors during the 1895-1905 decade -- and that's the point Ryan stresses.  That said, Larison is correct to say that Ryan exaggerates Friedberg's thesis.  If Ryan had said "Western  hemisphere" instead of "Western world," however, he'd be spot-on accurate. 

So, closer, but no cigar. 

Others have also lobbed their criticisms of Ryan's speech, but I don't think these rise to the level of assertive ignorance. 

These paragraphs of Ryan's speech, however, are another story: 

We cannot face these challenges alone. To the contrary, we need our allies and friends to increase their capacity and willingness to act in defense of our common interests.

The first step in that process is robust and frank engagement with our closest allies. We all share an interest in the maintenance of the international order with its liberal trading system, general tranquility, and abundant opportunity – and we should all share the burden of maintaining it.

The Obama administration has taken our allies for granted and accepted too willingly the decline of their capacity for international action. Our alliances were vital to our victory in the Cold War and they need to be revitalized to see us through the 21^st century.

Ryan commits an empirical and a logical error here that meets the bar for a Trumpie nomination.  The empirical error is that the notion that the Obama administration has "accepted too willingly" the military decline of key allies.  Indeed, even a cursory glance at the Libya operation suggests the exact opposite of that approach.  A look at the distribution of effort on Libya suggests that while the United States is still exercising leaedership, they've actually managed to get allies to fly a majority of the air sorties.  The attack helicopter gambit is also being led by France and the U.K.  As John Burns reports in today's New York Times:

With the costs of the air campaign mounting, and the stresses growing on air crews, finding a way of breaking the stalemate has become a priority for NATO, and particularly for Britain and France, which are carrying the brunt of the campaign.

Mr. Obama has let NATO allies take the lead in the Libyan operations, an unusual role for them in the history of such operations. The United States’ role has been confined primarily to air refueling, airborne command and control, surveillance and the deployment of missile-carrying drones.

The bigger, logical error, however, is exactly what the "robust and frank engagement with our closest allies" would look like.  Basically, Ryan's definition of U.S. leadership amounts to "exerting pressure on our allies to take on greater defense expenditures."  OK, but how will this conversation take place?  Let's imagine this: 

PRESIDENT RYAN:  Hey, NATO allies -- to be robust and frank about it, you need to goose up your defense expenditures and assist us more vigorously.  

NATO ALLIES:  What's that?  I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the protestors in the streets furious about the latest round of bailouts to Greece and Ireland, combined with the cuts in social services we need to make in a nod towards austerity.  Hey, you're a big fan of that policy, right?  What's that you want us to do again with our increasingly scarce capital in a politically hostile environment? 

PRESIDENT RYAN:  Uh, never mind, let me try our Japanese allies.  Hey, Japan, we've been protecting you for decades, it's time to pony up and contribute your fair share.

JAPAN:  I'm sorry, what was that?  I couldn't hear you because we're selecting which old people will volunteer to help clean up the Fukushima reactor mess.  Gee, this is not going to be cheap, and our debt-to-GDP ratio is already at 200%.  You really harped on the debt problem during your campaign, so you know what we're talking about here.  Now, what did you want us to do with our dwindling and rapidly agining population again? 

PRESIDENT RYAN:  Er... (to foreign policy advisors) are there any rich allies left? 

Ryan's "robust and frank engagement" is really just one step removed from Donald Trump's claims that the right negotiator could get Saudia Arabia to lower oil prices or China to revalue the yuan.  It's the foreign policy of Campaign Fantasyland. 

And for that, I congratulate Representative Ryan for his hard-earned Trumpie nomination. 

Andrew Sullivan has wrung a lot of blog mileage from his myriad awards for stupid/extreme statements found in the news. In that spirit, as well as an effort to keep my sanity extract some humor from the 2012 presidential campaign, I hereby announce the Donald Trump Award for Assertive Ignorance in World Politics -- known on the street as the Trumpies.

Named in honor of the erstwhile presidential candidate who really likes to name things after himself, the award can be earned by either a presidential candidate or one of his/her foreign policy minions. To score a Trumpie nomination, the person must satisfy two criteria during a single statement or exchange. First, the nominee must display a breathtaking ignorance of some bailiwick of American foreign policy or world politics. Second, the nominee must do this while simultaneously demonstrating supreme confidence in the factual and/or analytical rightness of their statement. 

This second criteria is important. I won't begrudge a candidate who demonstrates uncertainty or befuddlement on a foreign policy question. World politics is a vast canvass, and as I've said before, expecting a candidate to demonstrate foreign policy omniscence is a fool's errand. Similarly, I'm not looking for your garden-variety gaffe or misstatement that just indicates a candidate is sleep-deprived. No, the key here is that a candidate is both too ignorant and too proud to admit or even recognize their own ignorance. 

During the brief, shining comedy moment that was Trump's proto-campaign, he managed to demonstrate this kind of cocksure ignorance on multiple occasions.  With his decision to bow out of the race, however, the field for the Trumpies is now wide open and your humble blogger will accept nominations from readers and commenters.  The actual award, of course, will not be announced until after Election Day 2012. 

To get the ball rolling, the first Trumpie nomination goes to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, for his comments on Israel and Palestine on Fox News Sunday:

Now, let's be clear about what's so funny about this clip. Cain's first answer, on offering "nothing" to the Palestinians to make peace, is not what's funny. It's reckless and extreme, but Cain's position possesses some internal logical coherence. It's the combination of this answer with his observation that the Palestinian "right of return" should be negotiated that makes the clip so funny (get a Palestinian negotiator good and liquored up -- hell, just have hummus with them -- and they'll acknpwledge that the right of return is one of the things that they'll have to give up in any two-state peace deal). The combination of these two positions boils down to Cain favoring a single state encompassing both Israelis and Palestinians, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't favor that. 

The gaffe was significant enough for the Cain campaign to issue a "clarification of these remarks," which is always a good indicator that a Trumpie nomination has been scored.

Congratulations to Mr. Cain for the inaugural Trumpie nomination! The foreign policy analyst in me hopes that these nominations will be few and far between. The politics junkie, surveying the prospective field, is confident that  there will be many more nominations to come over the next 18 months. 

The field is now open for nominations -- submit yours in the comments or via-e-mail, and if the strict Trumpie criteria are met, you will see it in a future blog post. 

UPDATE: Oh, if Trump re-enters the race, there's gonna be a lot of nominations. Bravo to the Donald for trying to preserve the quality of his brand. 

ANOTHER UPDATE:  See if Cain had simply admitted to Wallace that he didn't know what "the right to return" meant, he'd have avoided the Trumpie nomination.  Instead, he admitted it to Sean Hannity the next day. 

I confess to being fascinated by academic or literary downfalls, so I've been spending the past few days catching up on the imbroglio over Greg Mortenson, his Central Asia Institute (CAI), and his bestsellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools.  

To sum up:  through his books and CAI, Mortenson has popularized his mission to build schools and educate children (particularly girls) in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a way of reducing extremism in that region.  Investigative reports by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer strongly suggest the following: 

1)  Mortenson either fudged or flat-out lied about some of the more gripping anecdotes in both books. 

2)  Mortenson used CAI as a vehicle to promote his books and subsidize his income.  CAI covered his travel expenses for book tours and purchased books in such a way to boost royalties for Mortenson.  According to financial statenments, CAI devoted more of its budget to Mortenson's promotional tours than actually building schools in Central Asia.  Mortenson rebuffed efforts by other CAI employees to impose financial controls on his expenditures.

3)  CAI/Mortenson exaggerated the number of schools that were built, and in many cases even if the schools were built, they have been left unused due to a variety of logistical and organizational failures. 

Mortenson and CAI have responded with a plethora of media interviews, direct responses and open missives to supporters.  Most of these seem pretty feeble to me.  When Mortenson says that, "It is important to know that Balti people have a completely different notion about time," you kinda wonder if Mortenson isn't talking about himself.)  Official investigations are now under way, publishers are belatedly fact-checking, and some prize committees are very busy wiping egg off of their face. 

To be fair, Mortenson has actually built schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  On my personal Scandal-O-Meter, this rates far below Bernie Madoff -- but pretty far above, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin. 

So, what are the takeaway lessons from all this?  Five thoughts:   

1)  Reading through Krakauer's story, the striking thing is not the extent of Mortenson's deception but rather the fact that it took so long for this to come to light.  Mortenson has been a celebrity since Parade profiled him in April 2003.  The fact that Mortenson was able to write two best-sellers and enjoy the lecture circuit for eight years despite the surprising number of people who knew there were issues with Mortenson's narrative.  The moral of the story is that , even in a transparent Web 2.0 era, myths can trump reality for a looooong time. 

2)  Even Mortenson's detractors make it clear that they think he's done much good in Central Asia, so this realy isn't a Bernie Madoff-style scam.  It does suggest, however, that political analysts who think of NGOs and celebrity activists as pursuing humane policy ends only for altruistic purposes are living in  Fantasyland.  It's a world of complex and overlapping motives, and no influential actor in international relations is a saint.   

3)  What's interesting to me about the inaccuracies/fabrications in Three Cups of Tea is that, by and large, they are irrelevant to the larger policy question of whether schools can help reduce violent extremism.  Whether Greg Mortenson was kidnapped by the Taliban or not, whether he wandered into a village or not don't really matter from a policy perspective.  Based on the amount of ink pixels being spilled used on these questions, however, it's quite clear that these narrative elements really do matter.  As Laura Miller has pointed out in Salon, however, greater attention is being paid to those details than the NGO mismanagement. 

This suggests, in many ways, the power that creation or origin narratives have in developing politically alluring policies.  CAI ain't lying when they say that, "Greg’s speeches, books and public appearances are the primary means of educating the American people on behalf of the Institute."   Coming up with a compelling policy is not always enough to generate action -- narratives matter one whole hell of a lot. 

4)  Does Mortenson's myths and mismanagement undercut the policy message?  To tell the truth, I'm not blown away by Mortenson's policy message -- indeed, it's pretty weak.  As Alanna Shaikh points out in FP:

Its focus was on building schools -- and that's it. Not a thought was spared for education quality, access, or sustainability. But building schools has never been the answer to improving education. If it were, then the millions of dollars poured into international education over the last half-century would have already solved Afghanistan's -- and the rest of the world's -- education deficit by now.

Over the last 50 years of studying international development, scholars have built a large body of research and theory on how to improve education in the developing world. None of it has recommended providing more school buildings, because according to decades of research, buildings aren't what matter. Teachers matter. Curriculum matters. Funding for education matters. Where classes actually take place? Not really.

Spencer Ackerman has a detailed, link-rich post at Wired detailing the ways in which U.S. military's COINistas have drunk way too deeply from Mortenson's magical teacup.  

In the best defense of Mortenson I've seen, Daniel Glick blogs the following: 

But here’s the crux for me.  As somebody who has worked in a Muslim country (I was a Knight International Press Fellow working in Algeria in 2006), I know that Americans need a lot of bridge building in the Islamic world.  Mortenson has gone where few others have gone, and has put in incredible time and energy to raise awareness, seed schools, and give girls opportunities for education that would not be theirs otherwise.  I have no doubt he has done orders of magnitude more good than harm.  The same cannot be said for a lot of NGOs doing development work around the world, much less our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hmmm.... maybe.  At a minimum, I'd like to see the costs and the benefits of Mortenson's activities weighed very carefully right now. 

5)  I, for one, look forward to the day when 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer start looking into the living dead.  I will hereby defend every fact, every citation in Theories of International Politics and Zombies to the end of my days, or the end of days, whichever comes first. 

Am I missing anything? 

Over at Vanity Fair, James Wolcott blogs about the explosion of forthcoming superhero movies, why they will suck, and what this means for American exceptionalism. 

Actually, let me put that a little differently:  James Wolcott has used prose more bloated than X-Men 3 to attempt a half-assed connection between summer popcorn flicks and America's place in the world. 

First, there's his general critique of today's superhero film: 

For old-school comic fans such as myself (who had a letter published in the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby Fantastic Four in 1967—top that, Jonathan Franzen), these cinematic blowup editions are lacking on the fun side. The more ambitious ones aren’t meant to be much fun, apart from a finely crafted quip surgically inserted here and there to defuse the tension of everybody standing around butt-clenched and battle-ready, waiting for some laureled thespian (Anthony Hopkins as Odin in Thor) to elocute and class up this clambake. Even the films that play it loosey-goosier, such as the facetious Ghost Rider (Nicolas Cage as a skull-blazing vigilante who chills by listening to the Carpenters), end up laying it on too heavy, faking orgasm like a porn star trying to keep Charlie Sheen’s attention. For all of the tremendous talent involved and the technical ingenuity deployed, superhero movies go at us like death metal: loud, anthemic, convoluted, technocratic, agonistic, fireball-blossoming, scenery-crushing workloads that waterboard the audience with digital effects, World War IV weaponry, rampant destruction, and electrical-flash editing. 

 Three thoughts.  First, this critique ain't exactly new.  Second, the reason this critique isn't new is that Wolcott ignores Drezner's Sturgeon's Law of Crap.  Take any artistic or literary category, and 90% of the contributions to said genre will be total crap [Does that apply to your blog posts as well?--ed.  More like 95% in my case.]  Therefore, the easiest thing in the world to blog about is how 90% of any kind of genre stinks.  Third, Wolcott clearly slept through hasn't seen the superhero films that rise above the 90% and possess a fair degree of whimsy, like, say, Spiderman 2, The Incredibles, or Iron Man.   

As for the symbolic implications for American power, er, well, here's his key paragraph: 

Why so much overcompensation? The superhero genre is an American creation, like jazz and stripper poles, exemplifying American ideals, American know-how, and American might, a mating of magical thinking and the right stuff. But in the new millennium no amount of nationally puffing ourselves up can disguise the entropy and molt. Despite the resolute jaw of Mitt Romney and John Bolton’s mustache, American exceptionalism no longer commands the eagle wingspan to engirdle the world and keep raising the flag over Iwo Jima. Since Vietnam, whatever the bravery and sacrifice of those in uniform, America’s superpower might hasn’t been up to much worthy of chest-swelling, chain-snapping pride (invading a third-rate military matchstick house such as Iraq is hardly the stuff of Homeric legend), and our national sense of inviolability took a sucker punch on September 11, 2001, that dislocated our inner gyroscope. Sinister arch-villains make for high-stakes showdowns, but asymmetrical conflict has no need for them, and for all we know the cavern voice of Osama bin Laden could be a Mission: Impossible tape, poofing into smoke at the first shaft of sunlight. The subsequent War on Terror is one waged within a shadow maze of misdirection and paranoia where the enemy might be no more than a phantom army of apprehensions, viral bugs invading the neural network.

Let me be blunt -- I'm not entirely sure if Wolcott wrote this paragraph or outsourced it to a computer program that strongs together random clauses about American foreign policy.  Suffice it to say that the better superhero flicks -- both Iron Man and The Dark Knight Returns come to mind -- contain some interesting commentary on American foreign policy.  Indeed, a few years ago Jesse Walker at Reason argued, with some justification, that "Superhero stories may have begun as power fantasies, but it is our ambivalence about power that keeps the modern genre thriving."

I share Wolcott's distaste for hackneyed comic book films, but sometimes, a bad movie is just a bad movie.  Anyone trying to use any film released in January The Green Hornet as a metaphor for what ails American foreign policy really needs to remember that, most of the time, a bad superhero movie is just a bad superhero movie. 

Comment away on what's going to happen in Egypt after Hosni Mubarak's resignation third unsatisfying speech. 

Ironically, I think if Mubarak had said what he just said on the night of his first speech, things would be far more stable.  As it currently stands, however, it's painful to hear Hosni Mubarak referring to himself in the third person trying to give up as little as possible, even as his various power bases erode and more social strata join in the opposition. 

I think Mubarak agreed to transfer some powers to his Vice President, and he promised some constitutional chanes.  To be honest, however, that wasn't the primary theme of the speech, and I don't think this is remote close to ending the crisis. 

Developing....

The only thing I dislike more than admitting I'm wrong is admitting that Spencer Ackerman was kinda sorta right.

Cautiously in March and then more confidently in July, I predicted that new START was going to be ratified.  Right now, however, Josh Rogin reports that the odds don't look so hot:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the key Republican vote in the drive to ratify the New START treaty, said Tuesday he doesn't believe the treaty should be voted on this year.

"When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization," Kyl said in a statement. "I appreciate the recent effort by the Administration to address some of the issues that we have raised and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kerry, DOD, and DOE officials." ?

Kyl spoke with Defense Secretary Robert Gates about it last week. A possible meeting between Kyl, Biden, Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the works and could happen on Wednesday. The treaty was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 14 to 4 on Sept. 16, and is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor.

The Washington Post reported that the White House is offering an additional $4.1 billion for nuclear facilities. This latest offer comes on top of the other promises related to nuclear modernization, which have a price tag totaling over $80 billion, that the administration has offered in an effort to win over Senate Republicans.

I thought Kyl was making some not unreasonable requests back in the summer, but as near as I can read the Obama administration had pretty much given him what he wanted. 

It's possible that the treaty will be ratified in the next Congress, though that's a tougher road, and there's now some bad blood between Kyl and the administration to work away. 

Substantively, the treaty itself is not a nothingburger, but it's not that big a deal either.  There are two implications that flow from Kyl's decision, however.  First, he's given the Russians a great excuse to become even more obsteperous.  As Bob Kagan pointed out earlier this month:

Few men are more cynical players than Vladimir Putin. One can well imagine Putin exploiting the failure of New START internally and externally. He will use it to stir more anti-Western nationalism, further weakening an already weak Medvedev and anyone else who stands for a more pro-Western approach. He will use it as an excuse to end further cooperation on Iran. He will certainly use it to win concessions from Europeans who already pander to him, charging that the Americans have destroyed the transatlantic rapprochement with Russia and that more concessions to Moscow will be necessary to repair the damage. There's no getting around it: Failure to pass START will help empower Putin.

Second, even if START passes eventually, this little episode, combined with the endless ongoing negotiations over KORUS, are highlighting the massive transaction costs involved with trying to negotiate any hard law arrangement with the United States.  The rest of the world is now recalculating the cost-benefit ratio of doing business with the U.S. government. 

Anyway, the real point of this post is that I was wrong... again.  Let the pillorying in the comments section begin. 

Trying to pick the most offensive campaign ad of this election season is not easy -- there's a long and distinguished list of truly offensive ads out there. However, my award for Most Offensive Ad goes to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with this attack ad on Pennsylvania Republican senatorial candidate Pat Toomey:

I'll give credit to the DSCC: Not everything in the ad is offensive, just 98 percent of it. By far, however, the worst part is the DSCC's suggestion that Pennsylvanians not vote for Toomey because he thinks that "it's great that China is modernizing and growing." Using that logic, apparently the DSCC supports doing everything to keep China backwards and impoverished. Which, if you think about it a little bit, is really disgusting.

I'd love to say that this is the only anti-globalization ad of this election cycle, but that's obviously not true. In another ad, the DSCC blasts Toomey for -- God forbid -- spending part of his career overseas. Forbes' Shikha Dalmia points out, however, that both sides have been throwing up mercantilist ads as fast as they can produce them: 

Virg Bernero, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, where I live, has dubbed his opponent, Rick Snyder, Chief Executive Outsourcer (ha, ha). Mr. Snyder's crime is that he is a successful businessman who invested in a semiconductor company that once employed five -- five! -- people in Shenzen to sell its products in China. In other words, it is no longer a sin to buy from China. It is also a sin to sell to China! (Where did Bernero get his views on trade theory, anyway? The Kim Jong Il School of Autarky?)

Nor is Bernero alone in the Democratic Party: California Sen. Barbara Boxer is accusing her opponent Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, of outsourcing thousands of jobs to "Shanghai instead of San Jose"; Senate Speaker Harry Reid is calling Sharron Angle "a foreign worker’s best friend"; and Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Attorney General running for Senate, who lied about serving in Vietnam, has the temerity to attack his opponent, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, for "outsourcing" American jobs because her company got toy action figures manufactured in China instead of America.

Hostility to trade is par for the course for Democrats perennially beholden to Big Labor, but what is the excuse of Republicans -- the alleged believers in free markets? In race after race, they too are hitting China to beat Democrats. In West Virginia, Spike Maynard, a Republican running for the House is airing ads against his opponent, complete with Asian music in the background, castigating him for giving stimulus money to a Texas company that happens to be buying windmills from China. Meanwhile, in Virginia Republican Robert Hurt is accusing Rep. Tom Perriell of supporting tax breaks for foreign companies "creating jobs in China."

Well, it's not that surprising to see this. Americans think about trade through a mercantilist, relative gains lens, as opposed to the radical concept that trade can generate win-win outcomes. The Obama administration has abetted this mindset with a trade policy that careens between an idiotic exclusive focus on exports and complete radio silence. And, of course, China has been taking steps in recent months in order to perfect their role as economic bogeyman.

I'd love to say that if the Obama administration mounted a full-throated defense of trade liberalization, this mindset would go away. The thing is, I don't believe that. As the Gallup data suggests, even decent growth rates won't eliminate the zero-sum mindset that people have when it comes to free trade. 

Developing… in a thoroughly depressing manner. 

I think it's safe to say that Venezuela's economy has seen better days.  The government has been issuing something that looks an awful lot like food rationing cards.  Now the Financial Times' Benedict Mander reports that Venezuela's new currency controls are affecting its import sector in a really sensitive area: 

Unable to access enough dollars, local importers are feeling the pinch across a wide range of goods, from Scotch whisky, the nation’s favourite drink, to luxury foods and swanky cars....

Each month, whisky importers – some of the worst hit – say they can legally get only as much foreign currency as they would normally use in a day. Bars and restaurants fear the reaction when they run dry. “We’ve got enough boxes to last a few more weeks, but after that, I’m worried about what will happen,” said the manager of one bar.

The irony, of course, is that Venezuela is doing to itself what the United States has been trying to do to North Korea for years (and re-emphasized in the past few months) --  denying access to luxury goods for the elites. 

Let's call these kind of measures Mad Men sanctions, shall we?  Anything that embargoes sumptuous indulgences -- including alcohol, cigarettes, and Christina Hendricks -- counts as a Mad Men sanction.  The question is, whether self-imposed or externally imposed, do they make a difference? 

With respect to North Korea, I think the answer is pretty clearly no.  This is mildly surprising.  Even though I'm pretty skeptical about these kind of sanctions in general,  the DPRK is one of the few countries where Mad Men sanctions truly are "smart."  The North Korean elite leads a very segmented life, and making it harder to get Johnny Walker Blue affects very few average North Koreans.  That said, while the North Korean elite appears to be tottering just a little, it's not because they're going into Scotch withdrawal. 

Of course, there is a difference between an external actor imposing a Mad Men embargo and an internal actor screwing up the economy to the point that a petrostate needs to husband foreign exchange reserves.  For IR grad students out there, it's a good test:  is a regime hurt more from an externaly-created embargo or from an internally-created one? 

[And what about the IR effects of Christina Hendricks?--ed.  Definitely a question that begs for further research.  Dibs!!--ed.]

Developing....

It is now standard operating procedure for commentators to observe how large the gulf of ignorance is between the United States and Iran.  If any American observer tries to analyze Iranian domestic politics, there will be at least three commentators waiting to jump on that analysis as lacking in depth and nuance.

This is all well and good, but after reading Jon Lee Anderson's New Yorker story on his visit to Iran,  I think it's safe to say that other countries suffer from this same problem when they try to understand the United States.  Consider the following: 

Despite Ahmadinejad’s assurances that I was free to interview whomever I liked, a senior government official told me that I should avoid behaving “sneakily” during my stay, illustrating his point with a serpentine movement of his hand. In the end, I was authorized to interview only one other person: Hossein Shariatmadari, an adviser to Khamenei, and the editor-in-chief of Kayhan, the daily newspaper that speaks for Iran’s clerical establishment. Shariatmadari was imprisoned in his twenties for his activities as a militant follower of Ayatollah Khomeini, and was serving a life sentence when the Shah fled Iran, in 1979. When Khomeini took power, he was freed, but the Shah’s torturers left him without any of his original teeth. Though he is sixty-one, his mouth is sunken like a very old man’s.

Shariatmadari is a frank speaker, and his pronouncements are a generally reliable barometer for the opinions of Iran’s Supreme Leader....

The Green Movement, he said, was part of a grand conspiracy—conceived by, among others, Michael Ledeen (a veteran foreign-policy hawk), Richard Haass (the president of the Council on Foreign Relations), Gene Sharp (an authority on nonviolent resistance), and George Soros (the financier and philanthropist)—with the aim of overthrowing Iran’s government. The protests were not against Ahmadinejad, he explained, but “against the whole system.” Fortunately, “the people” had been mobilized and had stopped the conspiracy in its tracks.

Soros again!!  Is there any conspiracy this guy isn't a part of? 

Seriously, Ledeen and Haass loathe each other, and Ledeen and Soros probably loathe each other even more.  None of these guys have any direct influence over Iran policy, and I'm willing to bet that Ledeen and Soros' indirect influence is exactly nil.   

Now, take a moment to imagine a world in which Ledeen, Haass and Soros  are secretly meeting to overthrow the Iranian regime, and I guarantee that the color of the sky in that world is not blue. 

It's incumbent upon the American foreign policy community to develop a better appreciation of the domestic politics of other countries.  But, damn, it would be good if other countries could get a better working knowledge of the U.S. foreign policy community.  It's not like we're all that opaque. 

[Does this matter?--ed.  It does if Iran develops some serious misperceptions about U.S. intentions and capabilities.  Based on the article, the Iranian leadership is well on its way towards achieving that end.]

Earlier this month media mogul Andrew Breitbart (yes, that Andrew Breitbart) launched Big Peace as his latest website.  Big Peace's editor, Peter Schweizer, explained the founding principles of the enterprise in his introductory post: 

The word “peace” has been hijacked by those who don’t believe in peace, but rather believe in appeasement.  We intend to take it back.  Peace comes from strength.  Peace comes from freedom.  More people were killed in the 20th century by their own governments than due to any war.  Peace is a word devoid of meaning unless it includes liberty....

We firmly believe in interactive journalism.  National security issues are too important to kept to the “professional” journalists. (Notice the quotes.)

The commitment of the Big Peace Team is to give you the unvarnished truth (emphasis added)

Excellent, I thought.  More interest in international relations, regardless of partisanship, promotes a more vigorous marketplace of ideas.  With a commitment to the unvarnished truth, I was hopeful that Big Peace would shine a light on some unexplored areas of the foreign policy establishment. 

After reading Michael Moriarty's (yes, that Michael Moriarty) explication of the real power behind the Obama administration, however, I have some doubts as to whether Schweizer and I think that "the unvarnished truth" mean the same thing.   Here are some snippets of Moriarty's essay, "The Soros/Obama Puppet Show": 

From Dr. Henry Kissinger of Harvard to the honorary degree which President Barack Obama, also of Harvard, received from, of all things, a Catholic university, Notre Dame, the fruit off of the tree of such enlightened despotism, the harvest from their lofty efforts has one common denominator: thuggery.

The Kissinger/Nixon Presidency bullied its way to eventual defeat in the eyes of the American people.

Soros/Obama is repeating the same formula but from another, much Redder and very Islamic corner of the very Bipartisan, Kissingerized and Progressive New World Order....

The Soros’ obvious and undeniable objective, after having “broken the Bank of England,” is to teach Barack Obama how to destroy the United States of America as we have known it. He’s off to a very good start with his disciple and philosophic doppelganger.

There is, of course, a bizarre psychological syndrome in a Jewish Godfather and his blatant exploitation of a decidedly pro-Islamic politician with the name of Barack Hussein Obama.

Karl Marx and his Communist philosophy explains it all. Marx was Jewish as well … and perversely anti-Semitic....

To short or bet against the prosperity of your fellow man is precisely the mentality of all three major madmen of the 20^th Century: Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Life is not a horse race … but you can’t tell George Soros that.

Because Hitler was destroyed in World War II but both Stalin and Mao thrived, George Soros and, unfortunately, the likes of Henry Kissinger and many in the conservative corner of America, see a Marxist New World Order as “scientifically inevitable”.

“There is nothing Man can do to stop it!” “We will bury you!” as the Soviet Nikita Khrushchev prophesied.

Apparently Soros and Obama are here to throw the last few shovels filled with dirt into the graves envisioned by Khrushchev that will hold American bodies....

Why don’t all the citizens of America have blood shooting out of their eyes in rage?!

We are actually 1930’s Europe....

Now the new Kissinger is George Soros.

Soros puppeteers Obama in the same way “Dr. K” ultimately led Nixon to his utter humiliation.

Let’s hope to see the same outcome for the Soros/Obama Puppet Show that befell Kissinger/Nixon.

There's stuff I cut out about Marx and an odd Brazilian side note, but you get the gist.  Or maybe you don't, because I'm not completely sure I understand what the man is saying.  As near as I can figure, Moriarty is asserting the following:

1.  George Soros is Obama's Henry Kissinger;

2.  George Soros is a Jewish, Marxist, radical lefty who, because he shorts assets, wants to bring down the United States.

If Moriarty could make those charges stick, well, pass me the popcorn, because that would be some interesting news.  However, Moriarty provides zero, repeat, zero facts to back up these claims.  Seriously, I see no evidence of Soros' alleged influence over Obama, nor do I see any evidence of Soros' desire to bring down the United States.  In the end, this is an incoherent screed by a former famous person in which a lot of false comparisons are made and no truth is provided. 

Perhaps Moriarty's essay is uncharacteristic of the output on Big Peace.  If not, I must come to the conclusion that Big Peace has gone Vizzini on the phrase "unvarnished truth."  I think of that term to mean "the speaking of unpleasant, inconvenient, but nevertheless iron-clad truths."  Big Peace appears to interpret that term to mean "unadulterated innuendo and horses**t." 

It is not a shock for readers to learn that  I think blogs have been a great innovation for the information ecosystem.  That said, I've come across two examples in the past 24 hours where bloggers have really let down the guild -- because they blogged before reading through to the end.   

Example #1:  Brad DeLong, "Joshua Green Doesn't Get How Government Works.": 

Joshua Green:

Yes, Larry Summers is Leaving: Summers cast his eye on the Fed chairmanship and agreed to bide his time until Ben Bernanke's term ended at the NEC--a staff position well below his old job as Clinton's Treasury secretary...

"Below." "Above." Joshua Green is old enough to know that whether the Secretary of the Treasury is "above" or "below" the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy really depends on the people and on the President....

The rule is that with a President who is weak--or uninterested in economic policy--or when the Chairs of House Banking, Senate Banking, Senate Finance, and House Ways-and-Means are strong, then the Treasury Secretary is the more powerful position. But with a President who is strong and interested in economic policy, the Assistant to the President is the higher-ranking job.

This is an old, old story....

Over the generations, face-time with the king is what matters for power. (emphasis added)

DeLong makes a fair point here -- face time can be really important sometimes.  The thing is, Green tackled the "face-time" question head-on in his original story about Larry Summers: 

As Jonathan Alter lays out in his forthcoming book, "The Promise," Summers maneuvered to sideline people like Paul Volcker, Joe Stiglitz, and even Orszag, behavior more characteristic of the Clinton administration than the Obama administration. Alter also reveals that Obama's nickname for Summers is "Dr. Kevorkian," which does not imply paternal fondness.

But what really makes me believe that Summers won't stick around is that all this Machiavellian intrigue has failed to win him what he wanted most: power. Summers gets plenty of presidential face time, but he's not the nexus of White House activity that everyone expected him to be, and that doesn't sit well according to the Summers associates I spoke with. In my Atlantic piece, I go into considerable detail about how Geithner, and not Summers, came to be the key person on financial matters. But it wasn't just finance. Energy and health care care were also routed elsewhere, to Carol Browner and Nancy Ann DeParle. The hand-holding of anxious lawmakers that became an integral part of the NEC job under Summers's mentor, Bob Rubin, is being handled by another economist, Mark Zandi, a former McCain adviser. Marc points out that Summers does "ride herd over the administration's infrastructure renewal program." But I'd wager that infrastructure renewal is not what Larry Summers pictured for himself when he arrived at the White House.  (emphasis added)

Green clearly thinks that face time is important --- it's just that Summers appears to have a limited ability to converty that face-time into actual policy responsibility.  DeLong can dispute that assertion -- but he can't assert, as he blogged, that Green is somehow naive about the way Washington works.  Based on that paragraph, he seems better clued in than DeLong. 

Example #2:  Conservative bloggers on this AP story about the Obama administration's provisional changes to the National Security Strategy.  The story leads with the following:

President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change isa significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

As you can imagine, there are a fair number of conservative bloggers lashing out at this story.  Andy McArthy calls it "willful blindness."    Michelle Malkin concludes, "We’ve traded in a reality-based national security strategy for a Birkenstock bumper-sticker fantasy plan." 

Fine, except that if you read the whole AP story, you discover that the origins of the "Birkenstock bumper-sticker fantasy plan" are... Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush: 

Obama's speechwriters have taken inspiration from an unlikely source: former President Ronald Reagan. Visiting communist China in 1984, Reagan spoke to Fudan University in Shanghai about education, space exploration and scientific research.

He discussed freedom and liberty. He never mentioned communism or democracy.

"They didn't look up to the U.S. because we hated communism," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy speechwriter.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation....

Obama did not invent Muslim outreach. President George W. Bush gave the White House its first Quran, hosted its first Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, and loudly stated support for Muslim democracies like Turkey....

[Karen]

Hughes and Juan Zarate, Bush's former deputy national security adviser, said Obama's efforts build on groundwork from Bush's second term, when some of the rhetoric softened. But by then, Zarate said, it was overshadowed by the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and a prolonged Iraq war.

"In some ways, it didn't matter what the president did or said. People weren't going to be listening to him in the way we wanted them to," Zarate said. "The difference is, President Obama had a fresh start."

I'm not saying that this strategy will work -- but Malkin and McArthy don't seem to realize that they're saying that Reagan and Bush were Birkenstrock-wearers as well. 

FP's own Peter Feaver is quoted in the AP story as a skeptic, and I think he makes a fair point.  Over at the Corner, Michael Rubin looked at the same story and suggested flaws in the administration's argument.   I'm only partially convinced by Rubin's argument -- but it's clear that at least Rubin read the whole AP story before blogging about it. 

Seriously, read the whole thing before blogging it. 

Yesterday President Obama delivered a speech fleshing out his National Export Initiative -- the doubling of U.S. exports in the next five years.  Longtime and short-time readers of this blog are already aware of my deep skepticism of this idea. 

Others at FP, however, observe that it has happened in the past (1981 most recently), so  perhaps "Obama's plan to double the number by 2015 does not seem so far-fetched." 

So, let's clarify:  the possibility of U.S. exports doubling in the next five years is pretty small, but within the realm of the doable.  Obama's National Export Initiative will have no appreciable effect on export flows. 

The fundamental drivers for U.S. exports are the rate of economic growth of the rest of the world and the exchange rate value of the dollar.  If the dollar depreciates in value and the rest of the world experiences high rates of economic growth, then exports will take off.  Everything else would generously be described as window dressing. 

Let's consider the content of the key parts of Obama's speech to see what I'm saying:

I know the issue of exports and imports, the issue of trade and globalization, have long evoked the passions of a lot of people in this country.  I know there are differences of opinion between Democrats and Republicans, between business and labor, about the right approach.  But I also know we are at a moment where it is absolutely necessary for us to get beyond those old debates. 

Those who would once support every free trade agreement now see that other countries have to play fair and the agreements have to be enforced.  Otherwise we're putting America at a profound disadvantage.  Those who once would once oppose any trade agreement now understand that there are new markets and new sectors out there that we need to break into if we want our workers to get ahead.

First of all, a quick message to Jon Favreau:  Jon, this going-beyond-old/stale-debates thing gets tedious if you use it for every friggin' policy initiative. 

Second of all, could someone, anyone, point to a politician that once opposed trade deals and are now in favor of them?  Anyone? 

So, what are the components of the National Export Initiative, beyond a couple of interagency committees that will accomplish nothing?

First, we will substantially increase access to trade financing for businesses that want to export their goods but just need a boost –- especially small businesses and medium-sized businesses.

Let's be generous and say that this would make a huge difference (it won't) and that it would really increase exports from this sector.  Given that roughly 70% of U.S. exports come from large corporations, this still wouldn't accomplish all that much.  Next!!

[T]he United States of America will go to bat for our businesses and our workers....

Going forward, I will be a strong and steady advocate for our workers and our companies abroad.

And this effort will extend throughout my administration.  Secretary Locke is issuing guidance to all senior government officials who have foreign counterparts on how they can best promote our exports.  Secretary Clinton is mobilizing a commercial diplomacy strategy, directing every one of our embassies to create a senior visitors business liaison who will manage our export advocacy efforts locally, and when our ambassadors return stateside, we’ll ask them to travel the United States to discuss export opportunities in their countries of assignment. 

SCENE:  A small factory somewhere in Malaysia. 

The PLANT MANAGER and his FOREMAN are looking at the assembly line:

FOREMAN:  You know, we could really make a better widget if only we had a better-quality thingmabob.

PLANT MANAGER:  Well, we could import it from Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan....

[Sound of trumpets grows louder.  PRESIDENT OBAMA enters the factor on a Segway.]

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Have you thought of buying American?  [Obama exits]

[PLANT MANAGER and FOREMAN smack hands on heads]

PLANT MANAGER:  Why, of course!!  I can't believe we didn't think of importing from the largest economy in thw world! 

FOREMAN:  I know, it's like, we never even thought of America as a producer of anything!

PLANT MANAGER:  Thanks, President Obama!!

[End scene.]

Third, we’ll unleash a battery of comprehensive and coordinated efforts to promote new markets and new opportunities for American exporters.

Yawn.  See response to point one. 

The fourth focuses on making sure American companies have free and fair access to those markets.  And that begins by enforcing trade agreements we already have on the books.

As I've said before, this is akin to saying that the budget deficit can be fixed through better tax collection measures by the IRS.  It won't accomplish much of anhything.

Of course, new trade agreements might actually expand export opportunities, but the language in the speech on that front contains nothing new. 

We’ll also work within the G20 to continue global recovery and growth.  Last year, when the G20 met to coordinate the international response to our global economic crisis, we agreed that in order for that growth to continue, we needed to rebalance our economies.  For too long, America served as the consumer engine for the entire world.  But we’re rebalancing.  We are now saving more.  And that means that everybody has got to rebalance.  Countries with external deficits need to save and export more.  Countries with external surpluses need to boost consumption and domestic demand.  And as I’ve said before, China moving to a more market-oriented exchange rate will make an essential contribution to that global rebalancing effort. 

If there were any concrete policy directives on this front, I would straighten up and put away the snark.  Global rebalamcing would have an appreciable impact on exports.  Unfortunately, there's nothing in the speech on this topic beyond this paragraph. 

Finally:

[W]e’re going to streamline the process certain companies need to go through to get their products to market -– products with encryption capabilities like cell phone and network storage devices....

[W]e’re going to eliminate unnecessary obstacles for exporting products to companies with dual-national and third-country-national employees.

My reaction to this idea is the same as my reaction to the rest of the list -- these aren't awful policy ideas so much as completely superfluous.  None of them wuill have an appreciable effect on exports. 

The primary purpose of the National Export Initiative is to function as a political excuse.  The White House now has something to point to when critics accuse them of lethargy and/or protectionism on the trade front.   That is all. 

Did I miss anything?