NDN Blog

The astonishing Bush era foreign policy failures continue to mount

The Times has one of those pieces on Bush that makes you wish his term was over, today. Two excerpts:

Mr. Bush — an ardent believer in personal diplomacy, who once remarked that he had looked into the eyes of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and had gotten “a sense of his soul” — was taken in by the general, with his fluent English and his promises to hold elections and relinquish military power. They said Mr. Bush looked at General Musharraf and saw a democratic reformer when he should have seen a dictator instead.

“He didn’t ask the hard questions, and frankly, neither did the people working for him,” said Husain Haqqani, an expert on Pakistan at Boston University who has advised two previous Pakistani prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. “They bought the P.R. image of Musharraf as the reasonable general. Bush bought the line — hook, line and sinker.”

And:

The “Bush-Mush relationship,” as some American scholars call it, has always been complicated, more a bond of convenience than a genuine friendship, some experts said. When he was running for office in 2000, Mr. Bush didn’t even know General Musharraf’s name; he couldn’t identify the leader of Pakistan for a reporter’s pop quiz during an interview that was widely replayed on late-night television.

Relations between the nations had been tense over Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions even before Mr. Bush took office, and American aid to Pakistan had been all but cut off. But Sept. 11 threw the United States and Pakistan together. Mr. Bush demanded General Musharraf’s allegiance in pursuing Al Qaeda — and got it. General Musharraf demanded military aid that could help him maintain power — and got it.

Experts in United States-Pakistan relations said General Musharraf has played the union masterfully, by convincing Mr. Bush that he alone can keep Pakistan stable. Kamran Bokhari, an analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence company, who met with General Musharraf in January, said the general viewed Mr. Bush with some condescension.

“Musharraf thinks that Bush has certain weaknesses that can be manipulated,” Mr. Bokhari said, adding, “I would say that President Musharraf doesn’t think highly of President Bush, but his interests force him to do business with the U.S. president.”

In his autobiography, “In the Line of Fire,” General Musharraf writes glowingly of the trust Mr. Bush placed in him. But he passed up a chance to praise Mr. Bush on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” where he was promoting the book. Mr. Stewart asked who would win a hypothetical contest for mayor of Karachi, Mr. Bush or Mr. bin Laden.

“I think they’ll both lose miserably,” the general replied.

It sure seems that the litany of terrible disapointments of this era should become much more of a stable of the national foreign policy debate.

The NYTimes also writes about immigration

The top story in the Times' Week in Review section also tackles the immigration issue. I'm quoted towards the end. I will have more to say on the piece soon.

You can also find of some of our thinking on this on the immigration section of our site. A good one to start with is my recent post, the GOP Throws in the Towel on Immigration Reform?

The Post takes on the driver's license issue - intelligently

For those struggling to make sense of the driver's license issue, a new Washington Post editorial is a must read. The title tells the story:

Posturing and Driver's Licenses - Illegal immigrants already drive. The real question is whether to promote safety.

A busy and productive time for NDN

The last few weeks have been among the most creative and productive in NDN's history.

On our main site and here on the blog you will be able to find:

  • a new major poll on America's attitudes on economy and globalization, complete with a powerful examination of the state of working America;
  • a new far-reaching paper looking at the need to invest in our aging infrastructure;
  • comprehensive analyses of how the immigration issue is affecting American politics;
  • video and transcripts of two major speeches delivered to the NDN community, one on the future of the American economy by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and one on the future of US-Latin American relations by Governor Bill Richardson;
  • two new papers from our always insightful New Politics Institute, including a wonderful paper on social networking;
  • links to a major new piece Peter Leyden and I penned for Mother Jones magazine, called "The 50 Year Strategy;"
  • video of several additional events showcasing our thinking;
  • links to dozens of media appearances by NDN staff from the Washington Post to the San Francisco Chronicle to GQ, Newsweek and Parade magazines, to the BBC, NPR and Air America;
  • and of course dozens of thoughtful posts here on the blog.

Thanks to all of you in the NDN community for your support and insight, and thanks to the NDN team for stepping up at a critical time for the nation. I am proud of the contribution our community is making to the future of our country, but am aware all the while that our most important work still lies ahead of us...

Video's continued migration from TV

The Times this am has one of their periodic stories about how new media is changing old ways.  This one focuses on one of the subjects we've been talking about a great deal over NPI - how video has been liberated from the distribution monopoly of broadcast TV.  It begins:

WHY are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.

As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers — not to mention marketers and media companies.

“Video has been liberated” from the TV set, Beth Comstock, president for integrated media at NBC Universal, said last week at a panel at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

“If you’re in the video business,” she added, referring to companies like her employer, the NBC Universal division of General Electric, “it’s exciting to see where it’s going..."

Markos to Newsweek

News reports indicate that Dailykos founder and NPI Fellow Markos Moulitsas will now be a columnist for Newsweek. My how things have changed in these last 4 short years.....

I must say that what has impressed me about Markos from the first time I visited his site all the way back in the summer of 2003 has been his writing. He is an excellent writer, full of passion and clarity, vision and voice. I remain a proud friend and supporter, and am even prouder today for him than I have ever been.

Update: You can find his first piece here.

The Nevada Debate and Caucus: background on the Southwest, Immigration and Hispanics

Michael Gerson said it best in his Washington Post column:

I have never seen an issue [immigration] where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans … Some in the party seem pleased. They should be terrified.

Tonight's Democratic Presidential debate in Las Vegas draws attention to a state and region of the country that will play a very large role in deciding the next President of the United States.

In each of the last 4 Presidential elections Democrats have won 19 states totaling 248 Electoral College votes of the 270 needed to win. In the last two elections Democrats have lost the Presidency by a small margin in a single state - Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000. In each of these two elections the President Bush won a very high percentage of Hispanic voters, making the 5 swing Presidential states with large Hispanic populations - AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV - much more Republican. In 2004 President Bush won them all, and relied on this Hispanic regional strategy to secure his narrow victory. (See NDN's recent report, Hispanics Rising, and our new article we've just published in Mother Jones for maps detailing all this).

But in 2005, despite the clear and evident success of the Bush Hispanic strategy, the Republicans rejected this approach, instead replacing it one that demonized immigrants - call it the Romney/Tancredo approach. In 2006 the House GOP blocked bi-partisan efforts to pass immigration reform. In 2007 it was the Senate Republicans who blocked a bi-partisan effort backed by the President himself. Throughout all this national Republicans and their allies used extra-ordinary language and images to describe Hispanic immigrants, and the result has been a reversal of GOP gains in this community, the fastest growing part of the American electorate. In the 2006 elections the GOP lost 20 points with Hispanics. Angered by the rhetoric, Hispanics also voted in very high numbers, increasing their share of the American electorate by 33% - from 6% of the national vote in 2002 to 8% in 2006.

All of this is why I've described the Republicans handling of the immigration issue a catastrophic event for their party (click here and here for our analysis of how the issue played in the 2007 and 2006 elections). They are replaying the same play Pete Wilson played in California in the 1990s, one that was instrumental in turning a state that birthed Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and turned it into one of the bluest and most progressive states in the country. If the current Hispanic trends continue, these five states - AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV - will almost certainly go the Democrats way in 2008. If that happens it becomes very hard to see how the GOP wins the Presidency, as they would have to win a major northern state they have not won since the 1980s. Possible of course, but not something they can count on, which is why Bush Republicans like Gerson, who understand how they won, are "terrified."

The strategic importance of this region drove the decision in 2005 by the DNC to change the decades-old Democratic Presidential nominating process, long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire. Next year for the first time in many many years, a new state will go just after Iowa and it will not be New Hampshire. It will be Nevada.

So as you look at this debate tonight in this small state in the Southwest, think about how this state, this region, this community of Hispanic voters, and this issue of immigration may very well be the key to the Presidency in 2008.

More players join the global laptop for kids campaign

The Globe has an interesting article today on two private companies are providing new - and i think vital - competition to Nicholas Negroponte's remarkable One Laptop Per Child effort. 

Be sure to check out NDN's recent paper calling for laptops for all America's children, A Laptop in Every Backback.

GOP throws in the towel on immigration reform?

Just three days after their second consecutive election where a massive investment in demonizing immigrants did not pay off for the Republican Party, the leading GOP Presidential candidates have agreed to participate in a December Univision debate in Miami. There is simply no way to read this action as anything but a national repudiation of their extreme anti-immigrant strategy of recent years, and a desperate attempt to beg the Hispanic community for forgiveness.

Perhaps the GOP reviewed NDN's analysis of how the immigration issue played in the last two elections. (Learn more about how the growing Hispanic vote will be the key to either Party's 21st century majority in our new study on the Hispanic electorate and immigration, Hispanics Rising, and in a new piece we just published in Mother Jones.) Or perhaps they read former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson's column in the Washington Post which argued:

I have never seen an issue [immigration] where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans … Some in the party seem pleased. They should be terrified.

Or this Washington Post report from Virginia about Tuesday's big GOP loss there:

The one point on which moderates and conservatives seem to agree is that their party overplayed the illegal immigration issue. "They went for a magic bullet with immigration, and it didn't work," says a conservative strategist who doesn't want his name used because his clients don't agree that immigration is a losing issue. Prince William County board Chairman Corey Stewart, the strategist says, "won last year as the anti-tax and anti-growth candidate, and he ended up in the same place this year. He pushed hard on immigration, but it didn't move his numbers" in his reelection victory Tuesday.

Moderates say harsh rhetoric on immigration repelled independent voters. Northern Virginians "know this crackdown on illegal immigration was posturing," Potts says. "The only entity in the world that could solve that problem is the federal government."

Or this analysis from Roll Call's executive editor Morton Kondracke from yesterday:

For the umpteenth time, American voters this year have rejected a nativist approach to illegal immigration. It ought to be a warning to Republicans: Don’t make this your 2008 wedge issue.

Election results on Tuesday, especially in Virginia and New York state, also should encourage nervous Democrats that they can support comprehensive immigration reform — stronger enforcement plus earned legalization — and prevail.

Kondracke noted that, while the GOP's general strategy poses a threat, their insistence upon using the issue is even worse:

Even though past election results overwhelmingly indicate that enforcement-only campaigns don’t succeed — indeed, by offending Hispanics, pose a long-term threat to the GOP — Republicans seem bent on making illegal immigration a centerpiece of their 2008 campaigns.

...

Despite all that evidence, House GOP leaders have staged vote after vote on amendments designed to restrict benefits to illegal immigrants — even where the law already restricts them — and Senate Republicans led the way, joined by nine Democrats, in filibustering the DREAM Act, which would have allowed young people brought to the U.S. by illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.

If Republicans want to destroy their future prospects in increasingly Hispanic, once-Republican states like Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona, it’s their option. But the process could be very nasty.

Or this recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal - "Hispanics and the GOP."

Either way, the GOP's decision to go to Miami next month is a good one for the country. Let us hope it signals a new era for the Republican Party, one that ends both their demonization of immigrants and their strategy of blocking all common sense immigration reform legislation. In 2006 it was the House Republicans who blocked the big immigration reform package. In 2007 it was the Senate Republicans. Perhaps their admission of defeat will allow a new era where the two parties can come together and design a new 21st century immigration system that reflects the strong values of our great nation and meets the needs of the changing modern American economy.

Immigration, once again, despite huge GOP investment, does not perform for the GOP

For the second consecutive November election, the national GOP invested a great deal of money, candidate time and hope in using the issue of immigration to hurt Democrats. For the second consecutive election it did not deliver for the GOP (see this report from the National Immigration Forum for how the issue played in 2006).

Two headlines this morning tell the story:

"New York Democrats Say License Issue Had Little Effect"New York Times

"In the Ballot Booths, No Fixation on Immigration"Washington Post

The election results told us that while the American people are unhappy with our broken immigration system, they are looking for leaders willing to step up and solve the problem, rather than simply offering empty rhetoric and scapegoating. In each election, the GOP's strategy has been to inflame people's concerns about immigration, scapegoat immigrants themselves, while failing to offer a plan to fix it. In each election, Democrats advocated pragmatic solutions to a tough national problem and were rewarded on election day.

Looking ahead to next year, all of the Democratic candidates for President are united around a plan, called Comprehensive Immigration Reform, for fixing the broken immigration system. Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been one of the most bi-partisan legislative initiatives of recent years, as it has been enthusiastically supported by the Catholic Church, the Chamber of Commerce, many labor unions and immigrant rights groups, and political leaders as diverse as John McCain, George Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. In its original form it passed the Republican controlled Senate in 2006, and in 2007 even virulent anti-immigration Senators like John Kyl accepted the need to create a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform takes a three-part strategy to fixing our broken immigration system. It would 1) toughen up on the border and in the workplace 2) deal with the future flow of immigrants more intelligently to reduce future illegal immigrants from coming into the country 3) legalize the work status and create an earned path to citizenship for those 11-12 million already here, working, paying taxes and raising their families.

This common sense, tough and smart plan to fix our immigration system is supported by the American people. As a new memo from the National Immigration Forum shows there is majority support for the framework of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, including granting the undocumenteds a path to citizenship. Most national polls taken in 2007 showed 60 % plus support for allowing undocumenteds to stay in the country.

What the elections in recent weeks have taught there are smart solutions to the fixing the immigration system that draw broad public support – such as the legislation known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform – and there are approaches that work less well. Of course this makes immigration reform just like any other issue facing American political leaders today.

While the Democratic candidates for President have stood hard and fast on the side of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, the Republican candidates for President - save John McCain - oppose this legislation and have failed to offer any kind of realistic reform plan. Given the early polling, we should expect a very significant debate next year on immigration, with one Party largely unified in their support of a plan to fix the immigration system, and one Party largely unified in their defense of an untenable status quo.

The Republican handling of the immigration issue has been a disaster for their Party. They have invested tens of millions of dollars in an issue that has not performed, and has worked to reinforce their image as a Party more concerned with politics than solving problems. It cost them their national Chairman, Mel Martinez, who resigned over how his Party was handling the issue. And it is has alienated, perhaps permanently, the fastest growing part of the American electorate, Hispanics. The national GOP has seen these kinds of politics play out before in California in the 1990s. Their demonization and scapegoating of immigrants turned California, the home of Nixon and Reagan, into one of the most Democratic and progressive states in the nation.

As NDN outlines in a new article in Mother Jones magazine and in a recent major report on the Hispanic electorate, the strategic missteps of the Republicans on the immigration issue may very well be the key to a new and durable 21st century majority for Democrats. Michael Gerson, former speechwriter to George W. Bush, makes a similar argument in a recent Washington Post column:

I have never seen an issue [immigration] where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans … Some in the party seem pleased. They should be terrified.

NDN's hope is that in the years ahead the Republican Party will come to realize that their immigration strategy has been a strategic disaster, and decide to sit down and work with the Democrats to build a 21st century American immigration system that meets the need of our modern economy and does so in a way that is consistent with our values.

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